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THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 



THE 

Philippine Problem 

1898-1913 



BY 

FREDERICK CHAMBERLIN 

AUTHOR OF "THE BLOW FROM BEHIND," "AROUND 

THE WORLD IN NINETY DAYS," "IN THE 

SHOE STRING COUNTRY," ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 



BOSTON 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, 

1913 



-^^'i.- 



.^ti 



Copyright, 1913, 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 



All rights reserved 
Published, April, 1913 



Set up and elactrotyped by J. S. Gushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
Pressworkby S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



• C!.^ 3 4 394 8 



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THE MEMORY OF MY CLOSEST FRIEND 
FOR MANY YEARS 

MAJOR-GENERAL OLIVER OTIS HOWARD 

U. S. A. 
AND TO THAT OF HIS SON 

COLONEL GUY HOWARD 

U. S. A. 

HIS FIRST-BORN, WHO WAS KILLED 
IN THE PHILIPPINES 



INTRODUCTION 

This book is an effort to put between the 
covers of one small volume all that the students 
of our Philippine problem need to know for a 
mastery of the subject upon all its broad lines. 

The first chapter comprehends just so much 
of the history and geography of the Islands as 
is necessary for this purpose, together with a 
succinct account of the task as*it first presented 
itself to the American people. . 

Beginning with the second chapter, the vol- 
ume becomes an account of what we have tried 
to accomplish and have actually attained, 
closing with a study of the present needs of 
the situation and what appears to be the prob- 
able outcome of the future. 

The author has no point to make further 

than to relate the facts and to state what they 

demonstrate to him. The facts must be known 

before any intelligent understanding of the 

situation confronting us in Asiatic waters can 

be possible. 

F. C. 



Vll 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

PAGB 

The Problem in 1898 ..... i 

Situation and extent of the Islands — Brief history — - The 
friars the real government — Commerce discouraged as a pol- 
icy — Tribute exacted from all natives — No system of justice 
— Natives purposely kept ignorant — Tagalogs not the Filipi- 
nos — Study of the different races with degree of civilization 
and literacy — Less than one tenth could read and write in any 
tongue — But one per cent could read and write in any language 
in which there were books of general knowledge or news- 
papers — The rebellion against Spain in 1898 — The leaders 
induced by Spain to leave the Islands for a money consideration, 
all of which is secured by Aguinaldo — The American occu- 
pation begins. 

CHAPTER II 

We Begin . . . , . . .62 

Our international obligations — President McKinley sends 
the Schurman Commission to study the Islands — • Schurman 
Commission reports natives incompetent for self-government . 
and that anarchy would follow their ascension to power — 
The Taft Commission makes a similar finding — Particulars 
of our governmental system — Extraordinary powers given the 
local government by American Congress — Remarkable num- 
ber of natives in their government in 1903. 

CHAPTER III 
The Little Red Schoolhouse .... 80 

General Otis opens schools eighteen days after our occupa- 
tion begins — Profound effect of this upon natives — Teaching 

ix 



X CONTENTS 

PAGE 

of English a reversal of Spain's policy — A thousand teachers 
come from America — Why English was made only medium 
of education — Sacrifices and services of early American in- 
structors — Statistics of educational transformation — The na- 
tive teacher — Each pupil given manual training — Filipinos 
yet desirous of only primaiy education — Lack of funds — 
Remarkable influence of introduction of athletic sports. 

CHAPTER IV 

The Friar Lands . . . . . ,103 

One of the most important problems in the Islands — Friars 
so hated that ail had to fly to Manila in 1898 — The Pope 
consents to their withdrawal — The Insular Government pays 
^7,227,000 gold — Impossibility of disposing of the lands 
because of agitation against capital. 

CHAPTER V 

The Fifth Labor of Hercules . . . .113 

The toll of death under Spain — The cholera epidemic of 
1 902-1 90 3 — General anaemia due to parasites reaching system 
through infected water — How Manila has been made a sani- ] 
tary city — Six hundred artesian wells the most potent control 
of contagious diseases — We enforce sanitary regulations — 
Universal vaccination compelled — We establish a leper colony 
— Free medicines and surgery — The rinderpest — High infant 
mortality in Manila — Schools for nurses — Sanitation taught 
in all public schools. 

CHAPTER VI 

Good Roads . . , . . . ,123 

No reliable roads in the Islands when we took them — 
Why all construction must be permanent and maintained at a 
high degree of repair — First appropriation made by civil gov- 
ernment was one million dollars for good roads — Why this 



CONTENTS xi 

PAGE 

sum and two million dollars more was wasted — W. Cameron 
Forbes comes as Secretary of Commerce and Police — The 
only big business man ever in the Insular Government — He 
champions good roads with great vigor and intelligence — 
How he at last obtained success — Permanent roads in all di- 
rections, and adequate system of maintenance. 

CHAPTER VII 
Other Improvements . . . . •139 

The insignificant telegraph and cable system under Spain 
destroyed before restoration of peace — We install a modern 
system of electrical communication between all the important 
islands and centers — We increase the railroad mileage fi-om 
1 20 to more than 500 — Ten millions in gold expended in the 
important harbors — Manila only port in Orient beside whose 
piers a ship drawing thirty feet may lie — Coast and geodetic 
work — Market provided for out-of-the-way places by govern- 
ment vessels — A postal service of the first class throughout all 
the Archipelago. 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Omnibus Clause . . , . ,154 

Postal savings-banks — Their great popularity with the na- 
tives — Notable influence of the constabulary — The first cen- 
sus of the Philippines — We give the Islands a lower house of 
Congress — But three per cent of the Filipinos compose the 
electorate — Road and trail work among the savage peoples — 
How the Filipinization of the governmental service has pro- 
gressed — Some things the Filipinos do not yet want to learn 
— Why natives cannot be more rapidly taken into their gov- 
ernment. 

CHAPTER IX 

The American Personnel . . , . .169 

High attainments of our most important officials in the 
Islands — Young experts filling the executive places — Ameri- 



xii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

cans in the service compelled to leave the Islands at stated 
periods for their health — Revolution in manner of living 
since the early days — The beach-comber now only in history 
— The harm he and other dissolute Americans wrought — 
Our first American treasurers largely dishonest. 

CHAPTER X 

The Business Expansion . . . . ,176 

Total imports and exports averaged thirty-five million dollars 
under Spain — In five years under us they increased to sixty- 
six million dollars, and in 1 9 1 2 reached the figure of one hun- 
dred and five million dollars — Quickening effect of the Payne 
Tariff Bill — Great growth in the tobacco and sugar industries 
— Showing of the internal revenues — A complete industrial 
revolution accomplished. 

CHAPTER XI 

The Money Cost to America . . , ,183 

Since 1902 the expense of the Islands to the United States 
has been only for the support of our armed forces — How that 
expense may be itemized — Ten million dollars per annum the 
average — Credits that must be made to the account. 

CHAPTER XII 
The Problem 1NI913 . . . ..191 

Our policy in 1 9 1 3 — The gente illustrada opposed to 
introduction of necessary capital — The clamor for independ- 
ence — Consideration of the three possible courses open to the 
United States — Evidences of progress — Consequences of our 
continued occupation — The uncertainties of the future. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Governor- General W. Cameron Forbes . 



. Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

6 

22 
22 



Nipa District 

Typical Native Shanties 

Common Scene in Native 

• • • • • 

Nipa Houses of Poorer Class 



Manila. After a Rain 
The Manila of 1898. 
The Manila of 1898. 
The Manila of 1898. 

Quarter 
The Manila of 1898. 
Manila. Milk Venders, Old Style 
Cultivating Rice near Manila 
Negrito ....... 

Moros of Mindanao ..... 

Schoolhouse built by Benguet Igorots at Kabayan 
Present Type of Smaller Concrete Schoolhouse . 
Present Type of Larger Concrete Schoolhouse . 
House in Farola District where Cholera first began in 

Manila 
Burning Cholera-infected Houses in Farola District 

Manila ...... 

Manila. Tienda (Shop) before Sanitary Repairs 

Manila. Tienda after Sanitary Repairs . 

Benguet Road. Lower Section of Zigzag from 

Camp Boyd ..... 

The Old. Natives threshing Rice with Their Feet 

Bulacan Province .... 



26 
26 ' 

34 
42 • 

50 

50 
88 

96 

96 

114 

114 
118 
ii8 

136 V 

156 



Xlll 



XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

The New. American Machinery threshing Rice . 156 ^ 

Bontoc Igorot of the Constabulary at Three Periods of 

Service , . . . . . . 160V 

Filipinos in Our Army. Maccabebe Scouts who 

captured Aguinaldo . . . . . 164^^ 

Highest Types of the Tagalog Gente Illustraday Gov- 
ernors of Tagalog Provinces in 1904 . .228 ; 



THE PHILIPPINE 
PROBLEM 



CHAPTER I 

THE PROBLEM IN 1898 

Situation and extent of the Islands — Brief history 
— The friars the real government — Commerce 
discouraged as a policy — Tribute exacted from 
all natives — No system of justice — Natives 
purposely kept ignorant — Tagalogs not the 
Filipinos — Study of the different races with 
degree of civilization and literacy — Less than 
one tenth could read and write in any tongue — 
But one per cent could read and write in any 
language in which there were books of general 
knowledge or newspapers — The rebellion against 
Spain in 1898 — The leaders induced by Spain 
to leave the Islands for a money consideration, 
all of which is secured by Aguinaldo — The 
American occupation begins. 

The Philippines were discovered by the 
people of the United States upon May Day, 
1898, when Commodore Dewey met the Spanish 
fleet in Manila Bay. Before that, probably 
not one American in a hundred even recollected 
the Archipelago's existence. 



2 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

And yet the Philippines, with an area of 
115,029 square miles, occupy more land surface 
than all New England and New York combined. 
They number 3 141 islands, of which only 1668 
have been named. : 

The group lies in an almost perfect triangle, 
with its most acute angle reaching up to a north 
latitude of 21°, which is that of Honolulu, of 
Vera Cruz, and the center of the Sahara. This 
apex is a round thousand miles southwest of 
Japan, and five hundred southeast of Hong- 
kong. The western side of this triangle, eleven 
hundred miles long, rests upon Borneo. Its 
eastern side, of about the same dimension, runs 
to the Celebes Islands, between which and 
Borneo we may construct the base, with a line 
through the Celebes and Sulu Seas, a length of 
about seven hundred miles, 6° above the equa- 
tor, which is the latitude of the northern bound- 
ary of Brazil, the southern boundary of Egypt, 
and of Colombo in Ceylon. The group is 
structurally connected with Borneo and the 
Celebes by three isthmuses, which are partly 
submerged. 

It cannot be determined who was the first for- 
eign visitor to the Philippines, nor when he 
arrived. Neither can we tell more definitely 
of the origin of the people this first adventurer 
found there, or of their predecessors, if there 
were any. The earliest authentic records upon 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 3 

this subject are those In Chinese describing a 
trading voyage in the thirteenth century. The 
three hundred years thereafter are blank. 
Then came the Portuguese navigator Magellan, 
in the employ of Spain. He arrived in 1521 
only to meet death, after raising the flag of his 
new sovereign, upon Mactan, a small island 
just south of Cebu, while attempting to conquer 
a local ruler. 

The ethnologists seem to agree that the Ne- 
gritos, the present pigmies of the Islands, were 
the original inhabitants and that their dominion 
was overthrown by the Malays, the forbears 
of practically all the Filipinos, as we know 
them. It is to the Malay, then, that we must 
look for the ancestral race of the Islands — and 
except in physique and the unimportant dif- 
ferences due to location, the Filipinos are 
Malays, as pure as any others ; their charac- 
teristics, their natural instincts, are the same as 
those of their brothers upon the mainland to 
the westward, and upon the islands of the Pa- 
cific and Indian Oceans. 

Four years after Magellan, Del Cano, also 
in the employ of Spain, called at Mindanao, 
but did no more than call. For some forty 
years thereafter no white man visited the 
Islands — which had already been given their 
present name in honor of Philip II — until 
came the man who may properly be called the 



4 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

Father of the Philippines, Miguel Lopez de 
Legaspi. This explorer, with an expedition of 
four hundred Spanish soldiers and sailors, left 
Mexico, where he was in the Spanish service, 
warranted as governor and captain-general for 
life of all the islands he might occupy. He came 
to Cebu in 1565 and erected the first structures 
of white men, a fort and several dwellings. His 
most famous companion was an Augustinian 
monk, Andres de Urdaneta, who, with four 
others of his order, was intrusted with the 
spiritual care of such races as were conquered. 
The adventurers survived, chiefly by baptiz- 
ing the niece of a native ruler and marrying her 
to a Spaniard; and when they baptized her 
uncle a little later, Cebu became friendly 
territory. In 1566 came Juan de Salcedo, 
grandson of Legaspi and a youth of but seven- 
teen years, who was destined to become the 
conqueror of the Philippines. He was but 
twenty-one, in 1570, when he was one of the 
leaders of a successful expedition against Ma- 
nila, then with its environs a place of some thirty 
thousand Malays. In 1571 Legaspi organized 
the government of Cebu upon Spanish lines, 
dividing all the natives as slaves among his 
favorites. This done, he set out for Manila, 
whose inhabitants burned it upon seeing his 
approach. The modern city, as we know it, 
was then founded upon the ruins with stately 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 5 

Catholic ceremonies, its government confided 
to alcaldes, and its domain divided among the 
conquerors so that each had a plot upon which 
to build his home. The native sovereign was 
baptized and his name changed to Felipe in 
honor of the Spanish monarch ; the mission- 
aries spread over Luzon as rapidly as their 
movements could be made safely, and young 
Salcedo proceeded to do the rest of the convert- 
ing with the sword. Salcedo, though, to do 
him justice, was a benevolent conqueror, and 
became a hero to the natives, being ultimately 
canonized in their history to a place second only 
to that of his grandfather, who lived but a year 
following his gaining of Manila. In two or 
three years, the entire Archipelago was under 
Spanish domination, except the present prov- 
ince of Cagayan, the most northern on Luzon, 
and Mindanao and the Sulu group at the ex- 
treme south, the conquered districts having a 
total population of about six hundred and 
seventy-five thousand. 

In the decade following 1580, the Islands 
were made to feel the heavy hand which sooner 
or later has settled down like a pestilence upon 
all of Spain's colonial possessions. In the year 
mentioned, a new regime came into power and 
with it a fresh governor with a life tenure and 
immunity from any oversight by Madrid. He 
came at his own expense with a choice crew of 



6 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

his own picking, and then the Philippines for 
the first time were introduced to that principle 
of Spanish colonizing officials — that a colonial 
office is a private asset and not a public trust. 
The alcaldes, the chief magistrates of Manila, 
who had theretofore been two in number, were 
increased to seventeen, a fair example of what 
took place wherever an office could be found for 
any favorite of the new governor. Bishop 
Salazar at the time wrote of . these officials, 
"They came poor and with scant salaries, and 
they deprived the Philippines of rice from their 
fields and all the other harvested products they 
could get." 

The fines that were imposed by the magis- 
trates became their private fortunes. No com- 
pensation was made to the natives for labor 
rendered to Spaniards, and whether taxes were 
or were not collected became dependent upon 
the ability of the taxed to make terms for non- 
payment. The friars were as black as the lay- 
men, the soldiery, and the officials; and right 
there was laid the foundation of that hatred of 
religious orders that has persisted until now. 

One result of the complaints carried to Ma- 
drid was the king's decision that the remedy for 
the outrages was to send as many missionaries 
as could be made available, and the Franciscan, 
the Dominican, and the Recoleto friars came in 
shiploads, following the Augustinians and the 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 7 

Jesuits. These orders were in continual alter- 
cation, and they even denied the authority of 
the governor of the Islands, and did not hesitate 
to lead open rebellion against his administra- 
tion. They incited the assassination of at 
least one governor,^ and all historians have 
agreed that the friars were responsible for the 
maladministrations that followed one another 
with almost relentless progression. By the 
opening of the seventeenth century, the friar 
landholdings were immense, and became sub- 
jects of official inquiry; but no inquiry was 
conducted too far, for the meddlers were in- 
formed by the archbishop resident that if they 
persisted in the inquisition he would excommu- 
nicate them. This threat was undoubtedly ap- 
plied at all other times whenever the needs were 
sufficiently pressing, and before long all govern- 
ors fell into the custom of confirming any titles 
to real estate that the friars said they owned. 
Nor did the monasteries stop at this ; they 
defied the authority of the Pope himself to sub- 
ject them to his control; and every time his 
representatives tried to enforce their rule, the 
friars met them with stern refusals, and in each 
instance came off victorious. The king gave 
especial instructions that the Pope was to be 
obeyed, but to no avail ; and when the monarch 

1 T. H. Pardo de Tavera, "History of Philippines," vol. I, Cen- 
sus P. I., pp. 316-317. 



8 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

pressed the contention, he was Informed by the 
heads of the orders that they would withdraw 
altogether from the Islands if they were not let 
alone — and the king surrendered. 

It soon became apparent that the best lands 
were claimed by the friars, and every priest 
was wealthy. It was common for one of this 
clirs to have every need provided for by his 
parishioners while at the same time he enjoyed 
an annual income of ten thousand dollars from 
the rentals of the lands he claimed as his private 
property. It is also matter of record that they. 
incited a wholesale massacre of all foreigners 
in the Islands^n one occasion not yet a 
century past, upon the excuse that these stran- 
gers had poisoned the water supply and brought 
on cholera, when the truth was that the mas- 
sacre was planned to checkmate the power of 
the foreigners, whose every act lessened the 
control of the church. In other words, the 
church was supreme — and not alone through 
the methods described, but by the very laws 
of the temporal throne of the mother country. 
For example, no formal complaint of an alleged 
crime by any inhabitant became of legal effect 
until the local curate had set his approval 
thereon. No financial report, no enrolling of 
natives in military service, and no other official 
document became effective until viseed by the 
priest. Then, too, to cement this control, it was 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 9 

illegal for any priest who was not a Spaniard 
to come to the Islands. Their domination, 
therefore, was complete. If there was anything 
that they wanted, they took it, and then either 
traded favors with or controlled the temporal 
power, until their possession was confirmed ; 
and from 1580 until almost 1900 they success- 
fully defied God, m the Pope, and Man, in the 
monarchs of Spain — and even we could not 
cut the knot. We could only untie it with 
money. 

Commerce was throttled by deliberate pol- 
icy. The Islands were permitted to carry on 
trade with no European nation except Spain. 
At first they could not barter, even with Span- 
ish colonies, but this ban was later modified 
to permit the traverse to Mexico of one ship 
a year, of a fixed maximum tonnage and a 
maximum value of cargo. Upon its return 
voyage, this sole bottom could bring only a 
stated sum of money, and any consignor on 
an outgoing ship, no matter how insignificant, 
was compelled to attend his goods in his own 
person, until they were actually delivered to the 
consignee. Not a dollar's worth could be le- 
gally sold to anybody residing in Mexico, the 
one important customer then in the New World, 
because, for one reason, the merchants of 
Cadiz and Seville found that such a trade would 
mean competition with their monopoly. 



lo THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

Among other restrictions imposed was a rule 
that nobody could ship goods who was not a mem- 
ber of the board of trade. This meant that the 
applicant must have resided in the Islands for a 
certain term of years, besides possessing property 
to the value of eight thousand dollars. He also 
had to contribute his proportion of a present to 
the naval officer in command of the ship, this 
donation amounting to twenty thousand dollars 
for each round voyage. In addition, the prospec- 
tive shipper had to contribute from twenty-five 
to forty per cent of the value of his consign- 
ment to certain aldermen, members of the army, 
or other petty officials who needed money. 
The method by which this extortion was car- 
ried out was for the governmeri'f'^o issue to 
these hangers-on gratuitous permits to ship 
goods in a particular bottom, documents which 
cost other people a large sum of money. These 
permits, thus gratuitously given, stated on the 
face that they could only be sold to members of 
the board of trade. The results are easily im- 
agined, besides being recorded by writers whose 
revelations have not been challenged. The 
bona fide shipper appeared at the wharf with his 
goods, after submitting to the foregoing pay- 
ment to the fund for the captain, and applied 
for a permit to put his goods on board. He 
was informed that all the permits had been 
issued and there was therefore no room for his 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 11 

shipment. Thereupon he was obliged to have 
recourse to the gratuitous holders of these very 
permits. It was common for the merchant thus 
to be mulcted for five hundred dollars before he 
could put on board goods the total value of which 
would not exceed twice that amount. Of course 
there was a division of this plunder between the 
officials who first issued the permits and those 
who sold them. These practices obtained, with 
intermissions of negligible length, for about a 
hundred and fifty years, and then were modified 
gradually ; but it was not until England forced 
Spain to open Manila to foreign trade in 1835 
that foreigners could become established there 
and do business in a rational manner. 

For its revenues, the course of the govern- 
ment was hardly more defensible. Every native 
from the beginning had to pay._ attribute for 
himself and for his wife, if he had one ; the gov- 
ernment made tobacco a monopoly; stamped 
paper was universally introduced ; papal bulls 
were sold to those who could be made to be- 
lieve that they needed them at the exorbitant 
price fixed ; and cock fighting wa^ imported so 
that the government could charge for licensing 
it. As late as 1834, the insular revenues were 
increased by governmerit.J:ra.ffic in opium, and 
in 1850 by setting up a lottery. """Air customs 
were collected on an ad valorem basis, and the 
assessing officials were never sure of the value 



12 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

until they learned how much money the con- 
signee had and just how much he needed the 
consignment. Every native had to give forty 
days' work to the officials in his vicinity or pay 
a fine, — which oppression obtained even up to 
1884. 

As to justice, and the impartial, scientific, 
steady administration of it, we must say that 
it was unknown. The courts were all presided 
over by Spaniards no better and no worse than 
the men who filled other governmental positions 
out there ; and the people as a whole learned 
that fines and imprisonment depended upon the 
purse and influence of the one accused. It was 
common practice for a judge to study the de- 
cisions of his predecessor with the view to re- 
opening a decided case as a means by which his 
own income might be augmented ; for the sala- 
ries' were small, as, indeed, were the salaries of 
most officials. Spain worked on the estab- 
lished theory that a colonial^oificial was going 
to be corrupt any^^vay, and that it was thus a 
waste of governmental finances to pay him any 
stipend ; all the government allowed him was 
the office. The judges, their clerks and petty 
officials, usually many more in number than 
were needed, and all employed upon the basis 
just stated, multiplied the required proceedings 
and trials, invented needless rules and docu- 
ments, all of which cg^st the litigants money and 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 13 

increased the receipts of the officers.^ It was 
a common thing for a rich man to spend years 
in jail without any hearing upon his case, before 
he would submit to the terms by which he 
could secure his release. At the time of the 
beginning of our occupation, ninety men were 
found in one of the Manila prisons in this situa- 
tion. I recall a visit upon one occasion to an 
old man in Manila who had been thus deprived 
of his liberty for more than ten years. Before 
he went there, he secured his freedom by a bribe 
of half his fortune, only to be reincarcerated 
when the court learned that he had not sur- 
rendered all he had, and to be informed that 
upon delivery of the balance he could go his way. 
After several years, he was about to yield, when 
our troops arrived and set up a court that would 
listen to an application for a writ of habeas 
corpus. 

Upon the authority of John Foreman, of 
the Royal Geographical Society, and the author 
of what is universally admitted to be, up to 
1906, the most authoritative historical work 
concerning the Islands, I am able to cite the 
following case as typical. A planter in Negros 
Island was charged with homicide. The local 
court discharged him, but the man, wise in his 
generation, hurried to Manila with Foreman to 

1 Blair and Robertson, "The Philippine Islands," vol. LI, pp. 
220, 221. 



14 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

get the Supreme Court, the highest court In the 
Islands, to confirm his sentence. Here he was 
confronted with a demand for legal expenses so 
enormous that he could only hope to meet them 
by mortgaging his plantation for every dollar 
it would bring, and when he had spent that in 
vain, Foreman loaned him two hundred dollars 
to supply the deficiency, and they returned, 
convinced that the matter was disposed of for 
all time. To their consternation, however, 
it was not long before a newly appointed judge 
in the local tribunal had the man rearrested 
and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, 
comforted by the assurance of his lawyer that 
if he had sufiicient means the matter could 
perhaps soon be arranged. 

If anybody be Inclined to think that my con- 
clusions are too severe, he may refer to Mr. 
Foreman's work.^ There he says : 

"No one experienced in the Colony ever 
thought of privately prosecuting a captured 
brigand, for a cripiinal or civil lawsuit in the 
Philippines was one of the worst calamities 
that could befall a man. Between notaries, 
procurators, barristers, and sluggish progress 
of the courts, a litigant was fleeced of his money, 
often worried Into a bad state of health, and 
kept in horrible suspense for years. It was as 

1 John Foreman, " The Philippine Islands,'\'pp. 239 et seq. 
(London ; T. Fisher Unwin.) 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 ij 

hard to get the judgment executed as it was to 
win the case. Even when the question at issue 
was supposed to be settled, a defect in the 
sentence could always be concocted to reopen 
the whole affair. If the case had been tried 
and judgment given under Civil Code, a way 
was often found to convert it into a criminal 
case; and when apparently settled under the 
Criminal Code,, a flaw could be discovered under 
the Laws of the Indies, or the Siete Partidas, or 
the Roman Law, or the Novisima Recopilacion, 
or the Antigueros fueros, Decrees, Royal Orders, 
Ordendnzas de huen Gohierno, and so forth, by 
which the case could be reopened. 

"Availing one's self of the dilatoriness of the 
Spanish law, it was possible for a man to occupy 
a house, pay no rent, and refuse to quit on 
legal grounds during a couple of years or more. 
A person who had not a cent to lose could perse- 
cute another of means by -a trumped-up accusa- 
tion until he was ruined, by an 'information 
de pohreza^ — a declaration of poverty — which 
enabled the persecutor to keep the case going 
as long as he chose without needing money for 
fees." 

When the Spaniard first came, the tribes he 
visited had alphabets and wrote upon leaves. 
As rapidly as the friars extended their outposts, 
they usually established what they termed 
schools, but which, as a matter of fact, were not 



i6 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

such at all in the ordinary sense of the word. 
The primary object of these institutions was 
not education but evangelization. There was 
no system of general character in any part of , 
the Islands, each priest setting up his school 
when and where he pleased, and giving it a curric- 
ulum arranged by the same authority. Nobody 
except the friars had anything at all to say about \ 
education, and in addition to reading and writ- ^ 
ing nothing was taught that was not of a re- 
ligious character, such as lives of the saints, 
their sacrifices and doctrines. No book could 
be brought into the Islands which had not 
passed the censorship of the church officials at 
Manila, and their ban descended upon every- 
thing that would tell of any country except 
Spain ; and of that only what was greatly in her 
favor succeeded in reaching the people. /The 
friars would not teach Spanish to the natives, 
because that would enable them to understand 
the governmental officials, which would destroy . 
the great influence the friars possessed over the ? 
natives on account of being the only persons who 
could act as their interpreters in dealing with 
officialdom whose members, as a rule, knew little 
or nothing of the many dialects. The priest was 
in absolute control in his parish, the ignorant 
people looking to him as the man who could 
condemn them to everlasting torment or alone 
save them from it. His word was the final 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 17 

law, and the crimes committed by these priests, 
for whose conduct there was no possible redress, 
constitute a record that is appalling. 

Thus was the Filipino kept in ignorance until 
two centuries had passed. Then, with the 
opening of the Philippine ports to residence of 
foreigners and the Open Door for world com- 
merce, the ideas that sprang into the world with 
the French Revolution and that in America 
began to reach through the Islands ; and in 1863, 
in the hope of averting by a single considerate 
law the injustice of three hundred years, Spain 
passed an act providing for general education 
in the Islands upon a comprehensive, modern 
plane. Primary instruction was to be obliga- 
tory and gratuitous, and no fault could reason- 
ably be found with the law as it read. But 
when it came to the test of application, educa- 
tion was left just where it was before, in the 
hands of the friars, who, for the reasons already 
stated, were opposed to anything that would 
give real knowledge to the masses of the people. 
The superintendence of the school was placed 
in the hands of the parish priest. Under the 
law, Spanish had to be taught. Taking ad- 
vantage of the provision by which he controlled 
the oversight of the teachers, the priest per- 
mitted that tongue to be taught only by those 
who did not understand it, or who did not under- 
stand the dialect of the pupils. It was further 



i8 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

arranged that the total salary actually received 
by the teachers reached the average of two 
dollars per month, without board. The op- 
portunity which this beggarly salary gave to 
the priest to insure the fulfillment of his direc- 
tions should not be lost sight of ; and we may be 
certain that the chances thus afforded to pre- 
vent the teaching of anything that would lift 
the natives out of their complete ignorance of 
the outside world and its institutions were 
utilized to their fullest extent. The imagina- 
tion can hardly compass the devices which 
these shrewd priests evolved to continue their 
control; and there were often no attempts at 
sanitation about the schoolhouses, although 
the conditions that obtained were a terrible 
menace to the health of the pupils.^ 

In approaching a study of the helpless people 
who were subjected to this pitiless misrule, each 
reader should understand that as Manila has 
been the only world-famous port in the Islands, 

1 "A decree of the general government, issued October 6, 1885, 
provided for a competition to be followed by prizes for the best 
grammars written in Visayan, Cebuano, Ilocano, Bicol, Pan- 
gasinan, and Pampango, there being one already in Tagalog. 
Naturally these grammars, which were written in different dia- 
lects and taught in the public schools, made it more difficult (and 
that was the object) for the Spanish language to become general. 
Matters reached such a stage that teachers were punished and 
threatened with deportation, and some were actually deported, 
for teaching Spanish." T. G. del Rosario, Census P. I., vol. Ill, 
PP- S94, 595- 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 19 

always their business center, the only port of 
calling of all shipping of magnitude, the seat 
of government, the only large city, that point 
came to signify the Phihppines and their inhab- 
itants, the Filipinos. A greater error or one 
leading to more misconception can hardly be 
imagined. If the Filipinos in 1898 had been 
the bright-looking brown men in white duck 
one saw about Manila, our problem would have 
been relatively simple, as many of them, through 
constant association with Europeans, the con- 
sequent infusion of foreign blood, and consider- 
able education, were able to manage large affairs, 
and had developed into men who were the 
equals of almost any others in a similar situa- 
tion. But unfortunately these were not the 
Filipinos at all ; they were almost invariably the 
best of the Tagalogs, but one of the eight so- 
called Christian tribes, whose aggregate numbers 
amounted to 6,987,686. Of these, the Tagalogs 
had but 1,460,695, about twenty per cent of all 
the natives termed Christians ; while there were 
absolutely wild men and Mohammedan Moros 
to the number of 647,740 according to the best 
estimate, but who never could be counted with 
exactitude, making the total population of the 
Archipelago at least 7,635,426, and probably 
eight million,^ as we have since learned. 

^ These figures just given are based upon the census of 1903 ; 
because it was the first reliable one ever taken in the Islands; 



20 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

The problem in the Philippines, in 1898, then, 
was not the problem of the Tagalogs, substan- 
tially all of whom were within one hundred and 
twenty-five miles of Manila, and the large ma- 
jority right in the city or at its very doors ; 
it was the problem of five times as many alto- 
gether different people with different tongues, 
the large majority of them far from the influ- 
ences of a metropolitan community, and more 
than half- a million of them hopeless savages 
besides. 

There are only eleven islands of any consid- 
erable magnitude : Luzon, on the north, and, 
to the south of it and but some twenty miles 
distant, Mindoro, Masbate, and Samar, all 
side by side ; then, still farther southward and 
similarly arranged, come Panay, Negros, Cebu, 
Leyte, Palauan, and Bojol, the latter the only 
one more than twenty miles away from the 
first group. Last of all, and but fifteen miles 
from Leyte, is Mindanao. 

Of the total length of the Archipelago, north 
to south, Luzon and Mindanao consume fully 

for the same reason, the statistics of population and literacy 
which follow use the same authority. Between 1898 and 1903, 
of course, the population had not appreciably altered. Literacy, 
however, was undoubtedly more general at the end of this period, 
after four years of American schools, than at its beginning, so 
that the natives are consequently credited as having in 1898 more 
literacy than in fact they possessed, which is not so important as 
that they be done no injustice. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 21 

y' 

J four fifths, or some eight hundred miles ; and 
in area, with 40,969 and 36,292 square miles 
respectively, each, with the other eliminated, 
is larger than all the remainder combined, which 
have but 29,562 square miles. 

All of these large islands are mountainous, 
and in their natural condition abound with 
tropical fauna that is apt for the guerrilla war- 
fare in which primitive people excel. 

Of the remaining 3130 islands, but 20 have 
more than a hundred square miles, 729 are less 
than a mile square, and 2046 have less than one 
tenth of a mile. 

Luzon is 530 miles long, and the upper half 
of it, on the average, 100 miles wide. A little 
north of Manila, the island suddenly narrows 
to forty-three miles, and never exceeds that at 
any point farther to the south, where in several 
places it is not more than a fourth of that. 

Talking in a large way, half the inhabitants 
of the Archipelago lived on Luzon, with its 
population of 3,745,406, all termed Christians 
except 223,506 wild men. 

The million and a half Tagalogs (round num- 
bers will now be employed unless the figures 
are plainly to the contrary), comprising some 
five twelfths of the population of the island, 
occupied a section extending one hundred miles 
to the north from Manila and forty miles to the 
eastward, in the very heart of Luzon j to the 



22 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

south of the capital they filled the entire Island 
for another one hundred miles, reaching to 
about one hundred and sixty miles from its 
extreme southern point, making the total terri- 
tory of the tribe thirteen thousand square miles 
or thereabouts — a space approximating the 
state of Maryland and one and one half times 
as large as Massachusetts. 

Eleven hundred thousand or more, nearly 
three fourths of all the Tagalogs, lived within 
seventy-five miles of Manila, and of this number 
some fifteen per cent resided in the city. Of 
the remaining eighty-five per cent more than 
one third, or three hundred and eighty thous- 
and, lived in twenty-three other cities of ten 
thousand or more. 

The salient characteristics of the Tagalog, 
then, could be mastered in Manila or its im- 
mediate vicinity. To be sure, the traveler, if 
he went no farther away, might be misled by 
the appearances of higher cultivation which 
the natives were bound to exhibit in this center 
of education and refinement, where they had 
come in closest contact with civilizing influences. 
But the picture of what Manila was in certain 
respects in 1898 and for four or five years later 
is typical of what we had to meet everywhere. 

Practically three houses in every five in Ma- 
nila were of bamboo, with a thick nipa palm 
thatch, which was ordinarily the home of ants 






" ^$^'^^^i^}^i^'^' \ .' '"■^^ ''^' 




The Manila of 1898. Nipa District 




The Manila of 1898. Typical Native Shanties. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 23 

and other interesting little animals. This flimsy 
structure, usually of one room, rested upon four 
posts that supported it under each corner at a 
height of from two to six or even more feet above 
the ground. If the space thus formed was not 
inclosed, it was the home of the family pigs, 
carabao, pony, and hens, when there were any, 
which was the rule. Usually these denizens 
fed upon what was dropped through a hole in 
one corner of the only floor the place possessed ; 
but even with these scavengers the surrounding 
atmosphere was sometimes not at all to be de- 
sired. Vivid imagination can hardly invoke 
worse conditions than those afl*orded by the 
actualities, many of which have not by any 
means been indicated. Hundreds of these 
structures, with all the animals their occupants 
could buy, were crowded as closely as possible 
into large sections of A4anila, some above solid 
ground, but the majority, probably, close to 
water, for the native liked to employ a river or 
a canal as his water supply for all purposes. 
He and his carabao and his pigs, his hens, and 
his family bathed and often drank in the same 
stream. The few dishes and pots he possessed, 
together with the family wardrobe, his dutiful 
wife habitually cleaned in this common water, 
and as it saved labor, the nearer the shack was 
to the stream the better; and so it very often 
was placed right in it. There was usually no 



24 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

furniture in the dwelling beyond a bench or 
two and a table, all rudely fashioned by the 
proprietor. 

Upon rising in the morning, each member of 
the family, except the baby in arms, lighted 
a cigarette and puffed at it until the breakfast 
was served in a single gourd, which was placed 
on the floor. Seated about it, resting the body 
on their heels, the family gorged itself in turn, 
each putting a hand into the receptacle and 
seizing all of the rice it would contain. Some 
six or seven square feet of strong garlic, gath- 
ered in one corner, was apt to fill the room with 
its pungent odors to add to those that came 
from beneath. 

The repast concluded, the mother would 
wash the pot and the single wooden spoon in 
the filthy river (I have seen it done in the Pasig 
River, in Manila, between a carabao enjoying 
its bath and a group of women washing clothing), 
and as soon as she returned, she would daub a 
betel nut with lime and proceed to chew upon 
it, thus blackening her teeth irremediably, and 
tingeing the saliva a deep red, as there was fre- 
quent opportunity to observe. Such were some 
of the details of the daily life of the great ma- 
jority of the Tagalogs in Manila, when we first 
came. 

There was little use by them of anything ap- 
proaching a public sewer. Where the river was 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 25 

not deep and there were no animals, the refuse 
of the family floated about in open drains, which 
formed by accident, were never cleaned, and 
over which the people seemed especially to de- 
light to build their homes, — it was so conven- 
ient. If by chance there was a well about, it was 
almost sure to derive from the drain much of its 
water supply. Scores of acres in Manila were 
covered with just such buildings as have been 
described, with no streets among them, no alley- 
ways, just a huddled mass of shacks crowded 
together as closely as possible, seldom more than 
a yard apart and usually directly attached to 
each other. When the night came, the family 
lay on nipa rugs one sixty-second of an inch 
thick, placed on the floor, which was made of a 
lattice of split bamboo an inch wide, set a 
quarter of an inch apart, so as to admit full play 
of air from beneath. The ponies, the pigs, the 
carabao, and the hens, therefore, were in a 
position to provide all sorts of entertainment 
for more than one sense, to the family above, 
and this they seldom failed to do. 

There were no further preparations for bed 
than those described, the little clothing that 
was worn remaining on the body until it came 
time to clean it in the river. 

For an oflicial statement of some of the 
sanitary conditions referred to, so that the 
reader may not fear that there has been ex- 



26 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

aggeratlon, the following excerpts are made 
from the 1902 report of Major L. M. Maus, 
deputy surgeon-general, U. S. A., who was de- 
tailed as the first Commissioner of Public 
Health of the Philippines.^ He then estimated 
that there were ten thousand nipa houses in 
Manila. As matter of fact, there were fifteen 
thousand, or about three fifths of all the dwell- 
ings in the city, as is still the case. 

"The surface," he goes on to say, "occupied 
by the nipa houses (in Manila) is, as a rule, 
unprovided with proper drainage, as a result 
of which during heavy rains the accumulation 
of filth and garbage is floated out into the 
streets and deposited over the district. . . . 
From reports received of 2,000 nipa houses 
recently inspected, only 11 were provided with 
cans for the collection of garbage, and but 5 
were provided with water-closet arrangements. 
As each of these so-called dwellings affords 
shelter for from 8 to 12 persons, it is impossible 
that sanitary regulations can be successfully 
enforced at present. . . . Manila derived its 
water supply from four different sources. . . . 
The main supply of the city is obtained from 
the Mariquina River. . . . Before reaching 
the pumping station . . . the river flows 
through a thickly populated valley containing 
the towns of San Mateo, Montalban, and Mari- 
^ Annual Report War Department, 1902, vol. X, pp. 328-330. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 27 

quina, the combined population of which Is 
estimated at 13,000. The people living along 
the stream above the pumping station use the 
river water freely for domestic purposes. They 
not only bathe in the river themselves, but 
allow their domestic animals to do so. Dur- 
ing the rainy season the filth along the entire 
valley (a stretch of more than a score of miles, 
thickly populated), and from these towns es- 
pecially, is washed into the river. . . . Dr. 
Calvert, of the army, made a number of bac- 
teriological examinations of water taken from 
the river above and below Mariquina and other 
towns in the valley, and found as many as 
613,703 bacteria to the cubic centimeter when 
the water was filled with people bathing, and 
with animals, while during a quiescent state 
he found from 6,000 to 15,000 colonies to the 
cubic centimeter. This is in striking contrast 
to the water supply of Boston, which contains 
about 73 bacteria to the cubic centimeter, and 
the Croton water supply of New York, with 
from 50 to 75. . . . A few (of the wells of the 
city) are kept clean, but the majority are dirty, 
and the water is usually polluted. These wells 
are generally located in the back yards, in the 
vicinity of the stable and cesspool." 

Of the disposal of night soil. Major Maus, 
upon the page last referred to (330), says: 

"Some of the best houses in Manila were 



28 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

provided with a seat in the second story, on 
the outside of the house, and the deposit al- 
lowed to drop in the yard below, where it was 
finally scraped up and carried away. The 
depositos or stone vaults so commonly found 
in Manila, as well as in all Spanish cities, are 
relics of the middle and barbarous ages, and in 
many of them collections of fecal matter, undis- 
turbed for years, were found to exist at the 
time of the American occupation. . . . The 
stone walls of these vaults are permeated with 
fecal matter, and as a result a permanent odor 
of night soil can be detected in many of the 
finest residences of the city." 

The superintendent of one of the chief 
branches of health work in Manila, writing 
at the same time, says ^ that among the best 
classes of houses in the city, after the stone 
vaults above described, the "most common 
style of closet is one built directly over the 
waterways and bay of Manila. ... In nearly 
every case of closets situated over or empty- 
ing into waterways, I find that the point 
of emptying is above low-water mark, and 
when the tide is out, the deposits are left 
high and dry, throwing off an unbearable 
odor, and being exposed to the action of flies 
and other insects for from eight to twelve 
hours daily. There is not sufficient current, 
* Annual Report War Department, 1902, vol. X, p. 371. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 29 

in fact, In the esteros of the city (canals, thirty- 
one miles of which are In city limits) to carry 
this deposit away bodily, but It Is gradually 
dissolved and mingles with the water itself, 
making a putrid, disease-breeding, open sewer 
of every waterway In the city. ... In the 
nlpa districts (containing three fifths of all 
the residences In the city) there are but a few 
closets of any description, the nearest approach 
to the same being a tiny bamboo house built 
up about six feet from the ground, the excre- 
ment being deposited on the top of the ground 
itself, and the collectors of same being the hogs 
and poultry of the district. ... In the out- 
lying districts of the city, there is no attempt 
whatever made towards closets of any de- 
scription, but the people use the open lots in 
the vicinity of the houses for all purposes of 
that character." 

In Manila, where have always been the best 
schools In the Archipelago, only forty-nine per 
cent of all the Tagalogs ten years of age or over 
could read and write any language. And It Is 
necessary to know that when the Census listed 
these forty-nine per cent as literate, the most 
of them could only read and write something 
in their native tongue.^ 

* The fact must be Impressed that literacy among the people 
of the Philippines meant the ability to read and write in any 
language — English, Spanish, or a Malay tongue. Since in all 



30 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

The full meaning of this may be learned from 
the investigations of competent scholars, nota- 
ble among whom are Tavera, Retana, and 
Medina, who have prepared exhaustive cata- 
logues of Philippine literature. I have ex- 
amined each of the 2850 titles appearing in 
Tavera's " Biblioteca Filipina." Among them I 
have found 161 volumes (only one edition 
counted in any of my calculations) published 
prior to 1898 in the Tagalog tongue. Of this 
number ninety-one, or more than half, were 
purely religious in character, such as cate- 
chisms, devotional books, novenas, and lives 
and deeds of the various Catholic saints or 
other religious personages. 

Of the remaining seventy works, fifty were 
in verse. Of these last Tavera terms one of 
no importance, and one as the most important 
poem yet produced by a Tagalog; the rest, 
forty-eight in number, are doggerel relations 
of some of the local tales, fables, and traditions. 

This leaves but twenty works to which resort 
could be had for books of true educational 
value; and these, so far as I have determined, 
were composed of the following : two grammars, 
each Tagalog-Spanish — one of the date of 1610 

probability less than ten per cent of the people of the Islands 
could speak Spanish or English, the fact is unquestionable that 
the majority of the people reported as literate could read and 
write only the native tongues. Census P._I., vol. II, p. 78. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 31 

and the other of 1884 — and one manual of 
conversation in the two tongues. As opposed 
to these were eleven books and probably more 
which would provide means by which Spaniards 
could acquire Tagalog, but being in Spanish and 
written for the purpose indicated, they were of 
little practical value to a Tagalog desiring to 
learn Spanish. 

This leaves but seventeen works unaccounted 
for. These comprehend a book upon cock 
fighting, rules and methods of training the birds, 
a single arithmetic, one novel published in 1885 
by a Spanish monk, which, with two novels by 
Rizal, a Tagalog more than half Chinese, the 
famous work called Noli me tangere, and its con- 
tinuation. El filibusterismo, are the only works 
of prose fiction in the dialect that Tavera ap- 
pears ever to have found bound. There was one 
volume on good manners, one drama, and two 
comedies, neither of literary value. There was 
one life of Rizal, the martyr, one book by a Span- 
ish missionary describing his impressions of the 
tribe, published in 1610, four volumes of rules for 
planting various agricultural products, and a 
humorous letter twenty-three pages in length by 
Rizal, and a study of ten pages relating to Tagalog 
orthography, by the same author — and no more ! ^ 

^ " There is no literature in dialect ; the few odd compositions in 
Tagalog still extant are wanting in the first principles of literary 
style." John Foreman, "The Philippine Islands," p. 193, {Cont.) 



32 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

Such appears to have been, substantially at 
least, if not exactly, the extent and nature of 
Tagalog literature as listed by as great a scholar 
as the Filipinos have produced.^ 

There were apparently but five public libra- 
ries among the Tagalogs, and according to 
the best authority all together possessed a 
total of five books in that tongue. There were 
one hundred and seventy other volumes, of 
which five were in German and the balance in 
Spanish. This afforded one volume in Tagalog 
dialect to every three hundred thousand Taga- 

(Conf.) "No real text-books existed In any of the Philippine 
dialects ; only catechisms, forms of prayer, fairy tales, almanacs, 
alleged grammars of the dialects prepared by early friars, who 
were plainly not phllologlans, were the things constituting the so- 
called Tagalog literature, Bisayan literature, etc. . . . There Is, 
in short, no literature worthy being described by that term in any 
of the dialects." Le Roy, "Philippine Life in Town and Coun- 
try," PP- 216, 217. 

1 An examination of Retana's catalogue seems to indicate sub- 
stantial accord with my examination of Tavera's work. Edward 
Gaylord Bourne, of Yale University, a scholar of national reputa- 
tion, says of his study of Retana's list : 

"... We have the singular result that the Islands contained 
relatively more people who could read and less reading matter 
of any but purely religious interest, than any other community 
in the world. . . . The first example of secular prose fiction I 
have noted in his (Retana's) lists is Friar Bustamente's (1885) 
pastoral novel depicting the quiet charms of country life. . . . 
His collection did not contain, so far as I noticed, a single secular 
historical narrative in Tagal or anything in natural science.'* 
Blair and Robertson, "The Philippine Islands," vol. I, Historical 
Introduction, pp, 80 and 82. F. C. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 33 

logs, and one volume of any sort to every eight 
thousand of them. 

It is probably safe to say that but five hundred 
thirty-five thousand of all the inhabitants of the 
Archipelago ten years or more of age could read 
and write Spanish, which number equals seven 
per cent of the total population as found by the 
Census.^ 

In view of all the foregoing, it will probably 
be generous to say of the Tagalogs in Manila 
that not more than twenty-five per cent of 
those ten and more years of age could read and 
write Spanish, the only tongue in which there 
was anything of consequence to read ; and as 
for the reading matter actually open to this 
small proportion, it is to be noted that the 
Manila newspapers, then seven in number — all 
in Spanish — and all bound volumes permitted 
to be printed or imported employing that 
tongue, were so censored as effectually to con- 
ceal or pervert all knowledge not welcomed by 
the political and the ecclesiastical authorities, 
— and that excluded about everything that 
was most worth while. 

The statement made in the Census taken by 
us in 1903 in respect to the Spanish tongue in 
the Islands is to the point : 

"How serious was this neglect (of the teach- 

^ "Special Report on, the Philippines," W. H. Taft, Secretary 
of War (1908), at p. 27. 



34 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

ing of Spanish to the natives) can be realized 
only when we consider that Spanish was the 
language of the official class and the sole one 
having an educational literature within the 
reach of the people. Therefore, the tribes 
speaking the different dialects had practically 
no literature and no educational facilities. In 
short, literacy in any of the dialects is not 
incompatible with total ignorance on all sub- 
jects derived from books. Hence, as shown by 
the Census, withholding instruction in Spanish 
from the Filipinos kept the great mass of them 
in ignorance, as the number who had received 
secondary instruction^ was but 1.6 per cent 
of the civilized population, and of the female 
population but seven tenths of one per cent 
had received a secondary education. These 
were able to read, write, and speak Spanish 
and comprised what may be called the edu- 
cated class." ^ 

Now while it is impossible to say just how 
many of the Manila Tagalogs were literate 
in Spanish, it is known that only nine per cent 
of all the inhabitants of that city, including 
twenty-one thousand Chinese, forty-three hun- 

^ Secondary instruction, In the Census, is any which succeeds 
the earliest nine years of school work. The Census designates 
this later study as Superior Education, and the term is adopted 
and employed hereinafter with that meaning. 

2 Census P. I., vol. I, p. 41. 




i^-^^£-'it'-' 



Manila. Milk Vendors, Old Style. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 35 

dred Americans, and two thousand Spaniards, 
of ten or more years of age, had attended school 
for more than nine years. ^ 

To them scant attention need be directed. 
They were the cultured people of the city, who, 
with others of their kind elsewhere, were always 
referred to by themselves and other natives as the 
gente illustrada (pronounced hontay illustrardar). 

They did not greatly concern the Philippine 
problem except as they demonstrated what 
they became at the end of three centuries under 
Spanish oppression and with the help of Spanish 
and Chinese and every other kind of blood that 
ever came to the port of Manila. These nine 
per cent were the equal of the Spaniard in prac- 
tically everything. Indeed, many of them were 
more Spaniard than Tagalog. These nine per 
cent could then take care of themselves. Six- 
teen thousand strong, they thought they could 
take good care of the other ninety-one per cent 
in Manila, and, if assisted by the similar class 
in other localities, they were quite as certain 
that they were capable of controlling the rest 
of the inhabitants of the Philippines, a balance 
numbering some seven million. 

The moment the traveler went out of Manila, 
the Tagalogs became less cultivated in appear- 
ance. They exhibited more of their brown 
bodies and their literacy decreased, except in 
1 Census P. L, vol. II, p. 83. 



36 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

the adjoining province of Cavite, which con- 
tained a population similar to that in the capital 
city. In the exception named, the literacy 
was ten per cent better than in Manila, but the 
percentage of those more than ten years of age 
with Superior Education was nine times less ; 
that is, in Manila that percentage was nine, 
while in Cavite it was but one and one tenth ; 
and considering the tribe altogether, with Ma- 
nila omitted, it was one and four sevenths. 
Taking the tribe as a whole, the figure was two 
and five tenths.^ That is, of every hundred 
Tagalogs to be met with in 1898 who were ten 
or more years of age, two and five tenths only 
had a better education than that possessed by 
our fourteen-year-old boys and girls in the 
United States. 

Except for the some ten per cent, which is 
surely a very generous allowance, who composed 
the well-to-do, cultivated, educated, refined 
class — the gente illustrada, as we shall here- 
after designate them — the Tagalogs, as mem- 
bers of the tribe, must be considered as having 
the following characteristics : 

^ Census P. I., vol. II, p. 83. This figure is arrived at by aver- 
aging the percentage of those with Superior Education in the 
provinces occupied by the Tagalogs : i.e. Bulacan, Nueva 
Ecija, Rizal, Manila City, Cavite, La Laguna, Batangas, and 
Tayabas. This omits Marinduque Island, which would make the 
percentage still lower. Also, for exact numbers, vide Census, 
vol. II, p. 753. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 37 

They had never read a book of broad educa- 
tional value, or a newspaper. They lived in 
substantially the unsanitary surroundings and 
manner which have been described with espe- 
cial reference to Manila, except that in the 
country or smaller towns the nipa shacks were 
not so crowded together, but rested in a vege- 
table plot or amongst the banana palms. 

It was the custom for a father or mother to 
sell their daughters as mistresses. If and 
when a girl ceased to be attractive to a white 
man, who paid her by the month, and she re- 
turned to her home, she was more eagerly 
sought for in marriage than before, because 
the natives regarded her success with the alien 
as indisputable evidence of exceptional charms. 

They commonly believed in all the wild 
spirits that have from time immemorial been 
credited by the uneducated men of all lands. 
Of Nono, the spirit of the aged, permission 
was requested to enter a strange forest, other- 
wise the traveler would be destroyed before 
he could turn homeward. If a person became 
ill with no apparent cause, it was due to Nono's 
displeasure. Tigbalan was an evil spirit, which 
resided now in one animal, now in another, 
one day in a pig, the next in the stray cara- 
bao which halted before the shack the day a 
baby died there. Asuan was prone to wandering 
about in the shape of a pig, which killed the 



^ 



38 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

child of the mother who had just completed 
her labor. Patianac was a strange phantom 
never seen, but known to be the soul of an 
unbaptized child who died and ever after must 
wander about the great forests, chirping like a 
bird. Lumalabas was the soul of the dead 
appearing in horrible forms that frequently 
drove people insane ; and sight of it, of course, 
was the cause of all insanity. Mangcuculan 
could cause the death of an enemy, and nobody 
would approach a man or woman said to con- 
tain him. Iqui could fly only at night, leaving 
half of his body, from the waist to the feet, in 
his home. This terrible demon sat on the roof 
of the homes of the sick and ran his tongue, 
that was no larger than a fine thread, into the 
victim's bowels, and ate the liver. 

The Tagalog wore charms on the chest and on 
the back and believed that after he said the 
rosary he could not be harmed. While at- 
tending the Catholic churchy hg had no pr(>-:> 
found belief ia it. If there had been any other 
church in town with better music and more 
mysticism, he would surely have deserted the 
friars for the other. He considered that he 
had nothing to do with any government except 
to feel its oppression. That he could have any 
responsibility in seeing law and order triumphant 
would never have occurred to him. The 
Tagalogs were altogether improvident. They 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 39 

worked only long enough to be sure of the 
next meal. They would sit for hours at a 
time and gaze at nothing. They were fatalists 
by nature, which made them fanatics in battle, 
as all Malays. When anything happened, no 
matter how serious it might be, the Tagalog 
never bewailed, but just said it was the will of 
fate and went about his affairs as if nothing 
at all had occurred. When angry, he was 
prone to lose utterly his self-control and destroy 
everything that was in his reach, animate or 
inanimate. Incomprehensible inconsistencies 
were to be found in almost every native. He 
was extremely affectionate to his family in 
certain respects, yet when his house was afire, 
he paused only to save his fighting cock, leaving 
his household to look out for its own safety. 
He would steal from his best friend ; he was 
a most cruel tyrant when given power over his 
own and other peoples, and was wantonly cruel 
to animals. He was stoical and silent, yet 
could not retain a secret. Extraneous agencies, 
the looks of a thing, were the most powerful 
influences in his life, rather than any innate 
desire or principle. He was utterly impractical, 
with no idea of the power of combination or of 
concerted effort. He had no more of the logi- 
cal faculty than was required to entitle him to be 
classed as a rational being. It was altogether 
beyond his capacity to determine by his own 



40 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

processes of mind whether a proposal were 
right or wrong. It was only one or the other, 
because somebody whom he considered to be of 
a superior class told him so. 

Tagalogs had done no more in the arts than 
had the American Indians. They had a marked 
faculty for the memorizing of music, but no 
capacity at all for the creation of original 
compositions. As a rule they played only by 
ear. Endowed with prodigious memory, they 
could often recite word for word the contents 
of an entire volume relating to the lives of the 
Saints, and yet be totally unable to answer 
a question in a manner that showed that 
they comprehended one of the ideas that 
they had just repeated. They did not know 
what it was to pity ; and if treated with a vol- 
untary concession of justice or generosity, they 
regarded the act only as an indication of weak- 
ness, and usually despised the doer for that 
reason. 

They had great reverence for the aged. 
Their hospitality was unbounded, so prodigal, 
in fact, that natives visiting a town had no 
need of hotels, but relied upon friends or rela- 
tives who put them up indefinitely, supplying 
the guests with the best at hand. There was 
no counterpart among the young of the American 
or Continental hoodlum, and universally the 
children were exceedingly well-behaved and 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 41 

respectful. Among their own people, the Taga- 
logs were genial and sociable. They were 
habitually light-hearted, and remarkably pa- 
tient under hard masters. The prevailing vice 
was gaming, and with the utmost nonchalance 
they would risk everything they possessed 
upon the turn of a single card or the outcome of 
some cockfight. To a fallen foe they were 
cruel, and mutilation of a foreign enemy living 
or dead was the prevailing rule. As for the 
truth, they seemed to have almost no sense 
that would indicate it to them. If found at 
fault, even in a most trivial matter, they would 
almost never confess, but at once begin to weave 
the most unconscionable fabrications to hide 
their delinquency; and when pushed by ques- 
tions that tended to weaken their explanations, 
they threw all caution to the winds and told 
falsehood after falsehood until the hearer was 
positively bewildered. Indeed, they would com- 
monly lie for no reason whatever, unless be- 
cause they admired their faculty to deceive 
or mislead ; and when detected in deliberate 
prevarication, they felt no moral guilt; their 
only mental attitude then was one of chagrin 
that they had not proven better liars, and if 
punished for lying alone they simply could 
not understand any reason for their suflfering. 
No child was taught the principle that truth 
was valuable, or ever to be told for its own sake ; 



42 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

the only rule was to tell what the hearer wanted 
most to hear.^ 

When talked with, they seldom did any rea- 
soning. They asserted that they did a certain 
thing, but could not tell why they did it; and 
it was plain that they had never considered that 
question. Everything was accepted uncom- 
plainingly, with never a thought that it could 
be averted, improved, or mitigated. A native 
Tagalog seldom employed "Why .^" — about the 
first and most incessant word with the young- 
est American children ; and in originality, in 
resourcefulness, in independence, in progressive- 
ness, in shrewdness, in the power to invent, the 
desire to hunt causes and effects, the power of 
deduction, the mind of the Anglo-Saxon boy of 
five is immeasurably more advanced than was 
the brain of the average Tagalog man of ma- 
ture age. Speaking of the latter as a class, he 
had none of these faculties in action. 

With a forked stick or root for a plow, the 
Tagalog would wade about up to his knees in his 
rice paddy by the hour, perfectly contented. 
When the harvest came, the women would go 
down into the same mud and with rude sickles 
cut the crop and thresh it with their bare feet. 

A glance about one of the small steamers 

1 See Census P. I., vol. I, pp. 499 et seq., for various high au- 
thorities upon most of my statements of Tagalog characteris- 
tics. F. C. 




> 
I— I 

H 
1-1 

U 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 43 

that plied around Manila would have shown to 
the quick intelligence the degree of civilization 
which the bulk of the Tagalogs had attained. 
The following account which I wrote in the 
early days seems still to tell the tale with care- 
ful accuracy.^ 

"Many, in fact the majority, of passengers, 
sat on the deck, usually on their heels, in the 
Oriental fashion. Most of the women were 
smoking. Others were chewing betel nut with 
irregular teeth that were already reddened or 
blackened with the habit. Poor teeth were 
almost universal. 

"The odors aboard would have sickened a 
person of weak stomach ; and had I not fought 
the tendency as hard as I could, I should surely 
have succumbed. When the boat had started, 
I pushed as far forward as possible and thus 
obtained some relief. There was an incessant 
jabber. The females dressed about alike. 
Within six feet of me stood a woman of about 
the average size, five feet tall, weighing perhaps 
one hundred pounds. She wore silver ear- 
rings of rude manufacture. A cigarette hung 
to her under lip. She wore a red skirt with 
narrow white stripes every half inch or so. 
Her bare feet were in wooden-bottomed sandals. 
At times her foot would withdraw until only 
the tips of the toes would be sheltered. Often 
she would stand on the left foot with the right 
resting against the left calf. Wide flaring gauze 

^ Frederick Chamberiin, "Around the World in Ninety Days," 
PP- 133-137- (Boston, C. M. Clark Pub. Co.) 



44 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

fluffed up about the shoulders. The neck was 
bared to the tops of the breasts, but never so 
low as to show even the beginning of their 
curves. The arms were naked except for the 
gauze, which was so loose that the arm could 
be plainly seen for its whole length. The pro- 
file closely approached that of a chimpanzee. 
The head was flat, the nose snubby, the jaws 
protrusive, the chin retrograding. As she 
looked over into the water her lips moved con- 
tinuously as if she were singing to herself. 
One small, inexpensive ring, set with a blue 
and white stone, was worn on the third finger 
of her left hand. She also had suspended 
from the neck, by a dirty cord, and resting on 
her chest, a brass charm about two inches by 
four inches, showing in bas-relief a devil dis- 
patching an evil spirit, demonstrating that 
no harm could come to the possessor of the 
relic. Probably half of the women aboard 
were similarly equipped. 

"One of the men at the wheel asked a woman 
who was amusing a baby on the deck beside 
him for a light, upon which she removed the 
cigarette from her charming mouth with its 
red teeth, and accommodated the gentleman, 
meantime seizing the occasion to spit on the 
deck. The baby had on only one garment, a 
shirt that by no possibility could have reached 
below his waist, and which, because of creasing, 
was never below his armpits. His mother wore 
a red shawl twisted about her forehead, and 
when the baby had procured his lunch, she 
deposited him on the deck and then turned her 
attention to performing an operation upon 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 45 

the head of a neighbor who, too, squatted upon 
the hard deck. Little animals in cages display 
similar solicitude for one another. The search 
was conducted with many a sharp * click' that 
demonstrated progress. 

"Hanging from the deck above were a num- 
ber of freshly caught fish which some of the pas- 
sengers had purchased at the market. These 
slimy things brushed my face more than once. 

"The score or so of game-cocks aboard, each 
of which a native gentleman carried under one 
arm, did not improve matters at all, as may well 
be imagined. 

"Often peddlers would move about, and then 
many would purchase eggs, corn on the cob, 
which was at once gnawed off, corn-balls, man- 
goes, bananas, and cakes of a slimy, chocolate 
colored, glucose-like concoction that I would 
not have tasted for the whole ship. 

"Finally 'Biiian' was shouted and the captain 
pointed to the shore and nodded as I looked 
at him inquiringly. 

"Half a dozen rude boats — dug-outs and two 
thatched-roofed affairs about five feet wide — 
bumped into us with the usual excitement, 
everybody cursing and yelling at once. I 
clambered down into one of the latter style. 
Bent quite double, for the roof was so low I 
could not sit erect, and in the terrific heat, 
which was surely ninety something and it was 
just noon, and in the midst of half a score of 
native women, children, and men, over some of 
whom I stumbled, with their garlic, game-cocks, 
smoking cigarettes, fish, and ill-smelling bundles 
of remarkable purchases in the city, I was a 



46 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

good deal disturbed, for the effect of all these 
things on my nerves made me doubt if I could 
long endure this filth and stench without be- 
coming ill." 

It should be repeated that one must not be 
misled by any pictures of apparently intelligent, 
well-dressed Tagalogs, such as were to be 
found in say ten families on the average in 
every town of as many thousand population. 
These ten families were on one side; on the 
other were the ignorant mass who had always 
been subject to the former.^ 

In 1898, roads worthy of such a designation 
connected the various communities of the Taga- 

* Dr. David P. Barrows, general superintendent of education 
and at one time head of the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes said : 
" If you go into a town of ten or twelve thousand people you will 
meet perhaps with a dozen, and generally less, families who repre- 
sent the dominant social element there, who are cultivated, who 
have received some Spanish education, who have wealth, social 
position, and who are commonly represented as being the type 
of the Filipino people. They are a type, but they are only one 
type. . . . My observation, speaking about the historical condi- 
tion, is that they are directly descended, or at least their social 
prestige is a direct inheritance, from the conditions which the 
Spaniards found there three hundred years ago. . . . The rest 
are a population who have no education, who have no wealth, 
and who are controlled economically and socially by the upper 
class, or, as it is called, the gente illustrada — the illustrious class. 
. . . This upper class is very ambitious. That is one of its 
first qualities, I think, that strikes one. They are keenly am- 
bitious — ambitious for education, ambitious for participation 
in the political affairs of the islands." Census P. I., vol. I, p. 510. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 47 

logs only in the dry months of the winter. In 
the rainy season, from May first to October 
first, about two thirds of an inch of rain fell 
per diem; when it came down, it dropped a 
cloudful at a time, and such roads as there were 
became but a succession of impassable gullies 
and holes. It was common to have an entire 
interruption of trafiic for months at a time 
between villages but ten miles apart. 

There was but one line of railroad in all the 
Archipelago. It extended for one hundred and 
twenty miles to the north of Manila to Dagu- 
pan, on the west coast, a narrow gauge affair 
with crude trafiic equipment constructed in the 
early nineties, at the expense of Spain. But 
the journey was apt to be uncertain in the wet 
season, and usually consumed eight hours. 

Silver was the basis of the money system, 
and certainly nothing worse could have been 
devised, as it worked out in this far-away com- 
munity. It required several hours to deposit 
fifty thousand dollars, the money being carried 
through the streets in sacks like meal, on the 
heads of almost naked coolies. Wild fiuctua- 
tions in the value of coins were common, and 
even when silver bullion was going down all 
over the world, Spain was coining it for the 
Filipinos, far below the intrinsic value the coin 
was stated to represent; and in 1898 the peso, 
the silver dollar, was quoted in the world mar- 



48 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

kets as of the value of forty-one cents gold. 
No merchant could reckon closely a day, or 
even an hour, in advance. He would engage 
goods for delivery on three months, only to 
find that exchange had so gone up that he 
would be obliged to pay for that item alone 
enough to offset his expected profit. 

There was hardly a record in the entire tribe 
of the Tagalogs that could serve as the basis for 
a sound title to real estate. The attitude of 
each purported owner in possession was that 
he had the property and was going to keep it 
until it was taken away from him; and if 
through illness, or through bad management 
or some other misfortune a native became in- 
debted to one of the gente illustrada, the debtor's 
honor compelled him to offer his services to 
the creditor until the obligation was liquidated. 
In many instances, a man spent his whole 
life in the slavery of an unscrupulous and better 
educated native, to pay no more than a few 
dollars. That is the device that is called 
peonage in other lands. In the Philippines 
it is caciquism, an institution that exerted a far 
greater effect upon its victim, who felt obliged 
to obey any command of the master, no matter 
what its nature might be. 

To this condition must be ascribed many of 
the terrible crimes committed by natives in 
the turbulent days from 1896 to 1900. When 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 49 

told by the man to whom the debt bound 
them to bury certain others ahve, it was done, 
and it never occurred to those who obeyed the 
order that they were not justified. Many were 
chopped to pieces and many throats were cut 
by these means ; but even when there was no 
money consideration upon which to found a 
relationship sufficient to insure the carrying 
out of such dastardly work, it was common 
enough for commissions of this character to be 
executed by a native merely because the man 
commanding it was an official, or wealthy, or 
educated. Until our occupation, a large pro- 
portion of the natives would do anything from 
throat-cutting to paying money that any 
member of the gente illustrada would demand. 
Such were the million and a half Tagalogs 
in 1898. Such are they to-day, except as little 
more than a decade may have affected them. 
Such were their racial characteristics ; and the 
Tagalogs were by far the most advanced of all 
the inhabitants of the Archipelago. 

Within twenty miles to the northeast of 

Manila were people of the mountain forests, 

^ *^Lor Bukidnons, as the native dialect classes 

•^a^'!*^them, utter savages, pagans. They numbered 

^^ fifty-six thousand, made up of many small 

^^ibes. A large percentage lived in tree tops. 

. ^^'^^They were more primitive than any race we 

have ever had upon this, continent, with the 



50 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

possible exception of the Mound-builders. They 
did not comprehend the Tagalog or Spanish 
tongues, and were absolutely illiterate. 

Thirty miles from Manila and adjoining the 
latter savages were the Negritos, the original 
people of the Islands, wanderers, pigmies less 
than five feet in height, round-headed, nude, 
wild men with undeveloped jaw. They could 
not speak Tagalog or Spanish and were of the 
lowest type of people, as far as we know, living 
on the earth. There were twenty-five thousand 
of them, all of whom were illiterate. 

Beginning thirty miles northwest of Manila 
and extending sixty miles to the north in a 
solid block twenty miles wide from that shore 
of Manila Bay, were two hundred and eighty 
thousand Pampangans with a dialect of their 
own, living in all general aspects just as the 
neighboring Tagalogs, but more illiterate, with 
the same or similar superstitions, the same un- 
sanitary surroundings, the same general charac- 
teristics. Twenty-six per cent of all over 
ten years of age could be classed as literate. 
One and five tenths per cent of all ten years of 
age and more had Superior Education ; and I 
find in Tavera's "Biblioteca" eleven books in 
this language — a dictionary, 1732, two man- 
uals of conversation (Spanish-Pampango, 1875 
and 1882), seven religious works, and one work 
upon patience as a virtue. 





o 

H 
t-i 

O 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 51 

On the north of these last was a block of 
Ilocanos, classed among the civilized people, 
occupying the same amount of territory as the 
Pampangans. Except for the intervention of 
the Pangasinans, who bisected them with a 
strip five or ten miles wide, the Ilocanos ex- 
tended clear up the western coast and usually 
less than ten miles inland, to the northernmost 
point of Luzon. In all they numbered eight 
hundred and four thousand and were distinctly 
below the Tagalogs in development. But 
twenty per cent were at all literate, and but 
two per cent had Superior Education. They 
did not understand Tagalog, and had a number 
of dialects incomprehensible to others of their 
tribe. Tavera learned of but five books in their 
tongue — one dictionary, 1873, Ilocano-Spanish ; 
two religious works, a comedy, and a volume 
upon manners.^ There were, however, five 
Spanish works for learning Ilocano. 

Three hundred and forty-three thousand 
Pangasinans, also classed as civilized, occupied 
a section upon the western coast beginning about 
a hundred miles in air line above Manila, and 
extending inland some score of miles. They 
were, in the main, on a par with the Pampan- 
gans, the two agreeing in literacy and in Superior 
Education, but with a distinctive tongue. I 
find seven books in their language — one dic- 
1 Tavera, "Biblioteca Filipina." 



52 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

tionary, Pangaslnan-Spanish (1865), and the 
others all religious.^ 

Occupying the entire central part of northern 
Luzon were the wild Igorots, the people of the 
marvelous rice terraces and the habit of head- 
hunting. Their worship was the most primitive, 
and they lacked any means of written com- 
munication, even wanting that of signs or 
symbols, such as the American Cave-dwellers 
possessed. There were two hundred and eleven 
thousand of them, with a language all their own. 

To the east of these lay one hundred and 
sixty thousand Cagayans, classed as civilized, 
who were much like the Ilocanos, only less 
literate, and only six tenths of one per cent of 
all ten years of age and over had Superior Edu- 
cation. Their language was incomprehensible 
to a Tagalog and to most of their immediate 
neighbors. 

Last of all above Manila, beginning twenty 
miles or so to the north, on the western coast, 
were the Zambalens, who ran along the shore, 
usually not more than ten miles inland, for 
seventy miles or so, forty-eight thousand in 
number, called civilized. These were com- 
parable to the Ilocanos, a little below them in 
literacy and the Superior Educated, one and 
nine tenths per cent representing the latter 
class. They, too, had their own language, in 
* Tavera, " Biblioteca Filipina." 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 53 

which I find but one book, and that of a reli- 
gious type.^ 

The Bicols occupied the entire southern 
hundred and fifty miles of the island. They 
numbered five hundred and sixty-six thousand 
and were but little different from the other 
civilized tribes in general characteristics. Ow- 
ing to the presence of a number of the Tagalogs 
among the Bicols, the latter had a literacy of 
twenty-three per cent of those of ten or more 
years of age, although the percentage of those 
having Superior Education was but one and 
six tenths per cent. Except where the Taga- 
logs and the Bicols were occupants of the same 
locality, they could not understand one another, 
and indeed there were so many dialects in the 
Bicol country as to make it seem as if the people 
were divided into an equal number of foreign 
races. They appear to have had twenty-seven 
volumes in the vernacular — twenty-two reli- 
gious, four vocabularies, ^etc, in Bicol-Spanish 
(in 1870, 1882, and two in 1896), and one 
volume upon good manners.^ 

Luzon, then, which comprises slightly more 
than one third of the area of the Archipelago, 
and, with 3,745,000 people, nearly one half of 
all its inhabitants, contained 2,600,000 of ten 
years and over among so-called Christianized 

* Tavera, " Biblloteca Filipina." 
Ubid. 



54 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

tribes, of whom two million could not read and 
write a word of any language, no matter how 
limited or crude it might be. In other words, 
nearly eighty per cent of the natives of ten 
and over in Luzon, excluding a fourth of a 
million of absolute savages, could not read and 
write a word of any language in 1898; and of 
the twenty per cent who could read and write, 
not more than seven per cent could read and 
write any language in which there was anything 
to read — that is, in which there were any books 
of general information or newspapers ; and still 
further, of even greater importance, of this 
twenty per cent but fifty-five thousand, or two 
per cent, had better education than the equiva- 
lent of that provided by the first nine years of 
American school life. Fully one half of the 
island was occupied by primitive wild men. 

This is the problem as it came to us in Luzon, 
the most highly cultivated of all the Archipelago. 

There were three peoples, one may say, in all 
the islands to the south of Luzon : the Visayans, 
who were classed as civilized, the largest tribe 
in the Philippines, with 3,219,000 souls, more 
than twice the population of the Tagalogs ; 
and four hundred and twenty-five thousand 
wild men and Moros, some of the latter 
civilized, but a large number savage. The 
Visayans occupied a narrow strip on southern 
Mindoro, all of Masbate, all but a tenth of 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 55 

Samar, all of Leyte, of Bohol, and of Cebu, 
the entire coast of Panay, and, on its northern 
and eastern sides, about half the coast line 
of Mindanao. All the remainder of these 
islands was occupied by Moros and by utter 
savages of the most primitive and irreconcil- 
able character. That is, of all the large islands 
south of Luzon, five sixths of Mindoro, a third 
of Panay, three fourths of Negros, nine tenths 
of Mindanao, and all of Paragua were occupied 
altogether by Moros and savages, few of the 
latter approaching in stamina and solidity the 
American Indian. In area, the Moros and these 
savages took up more than ninety per cent of 
everything south of Luzon. 

The Visayans were in all broad lines the same 
in instincts, in character, in nature as the other 
civilized tribes already considered. They were, 
however, more illiterate, only some fourteen 
per cent of all of ten years and more being able 
to read and write, while the Superior Educated 
class comprised less than one per cent. In 
their tongue Tavera discovered nineteen volumes 
— sixteen religious, a medical aid of sixty-six 
pages, a dictionary (1852), and a grammar 
(1876), both Visayan-Spanish. But there were 
eleven similar works by which a Spaniard could 
acquire Visayan. 

This completes the Archipelago. The total 
population classed as civilized, of ten and more 



56 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

years of age, numbered 4,973,000. Only a 
million of these, or twenty per cent,^ could 
read and write in any language, including the 
native dialects, in which, it is repeated, there 
was practically no reading matter of educa- 
tional worth. Of all civilized persons in the 
Archipelago who were ten and more years of 
age (4,973,000), five hundred and thirty-five 
thousand, or but little over ten per cent, — only 
seven per cent of the entire population, — could 
read and write Spanish, in which alone there was 
available printed literature to give general in- 
formation ; and only seventy-six thousand per- 
sons had more than nine years of schooling, 
they constituting one and six tenths per cent of 
the Christian population of ten or more years of 
age, and but one per cent of the total population 
found for census purposes. 

That is, as one went through all the Philip- 
pines at the time we took them, but a single 
person in every hundred met with had been in 
school for over nine years. ^ 

Tavera's catalogue, so far as I have been 
able to determine, records but 237 volumes in 
all the dialects together: 149 (144 have al- 
ready been cited) strictly of a religious charac- 
ter ; sixteen only which would make it possible 
for a native to acquire Spanish (the Ibanogs 

1 Census P. I., vol. II, p. 78. 

2 Il,i^, 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 57 

and Bogobos each had one volume of this 
character, in addition to those possessed by the 
large tribes, fourteen of which works have here- 
tofore been cited) ; and seventy-two of a mis- 
cellaneous class, sixty-seven of which were in 
Tagalog, — fifty of the sixty-seven were in 
verse, all but two mere doggerel, — the re- 
maining five of the seventy-two miscellaneous 
works being a medical help, a book upon pa- 
tience, two upon good manners, and a comedy. 

So far as I have learned from Tavera's work 
this, in substance certainly, if not exactly, was 
the literature of three hundred years open to 
the more than ninety per cent of the Filipinos 
who were not literate in Spanish. 

This affords one book in Filipino dialect to 
about every forty-two hundred members of the 
Christian tribes ten or more years of age who 
could read and write in any tongue ; and but one 
volume for every 33,500 of the total popu- 
lation. 

Nipa huts constituted ninety-four per cent 
of the houses in all the Archipelago, the better 
type having two or more rooms, with an in- 
closed stable beneath the flooring. Except 
for these latter, relatively small in number, 
the huts were as already pictured, as was 
usually the life of those who existed in them. 

The Tagalogs, in what is known as the 
Cavite Rising of 1872, were the first to lead 



58 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

an important revolt against Spain. It was 
suppressed in a most barbarous manner by 
thousands of executions and wholesale banish- 
ments. Those crimes were never forgiven nor 
forgotten, and the temporal power turned to 
the friars for aid to insure safety from the 
hatred that followed. The friars, satisfied by the 
opportunities thus presented to increase their 
wealth and power, undertook the main part of 
the task of breaking down the spirit of revolt. 
By 1896 the people had formed in almost every 
town among the Tagalogs what they called the 
Katipunan, or league. The friars termed it 
Freemasonry; and when the Archbishop of 
Manila was informed that the members would 
not confess with regard to its aims and acts, he 
decreed that all vows that could not be confessed 
were anti-Christian, and the friars were com- 
manded to make complaint to the local magis- 
trates of all who were members of this society. 
The friars seized the occasion as one by which 
they could rid themselves of anybody they 
pleased ; and hundreds of fathers were taken 
with no warning or justification from their 
families, and with no trial or even arraignment 
or hearing of any kind, deported to African 
penal settlements belonging to Spain, or to 
other islands filled with savages. Many of 
them died on the way. The Manila prisons 
were overflowing with them. Many of these 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 59 

unfortunates were so cruelly maimed by their 
jailers as never again to be able to earn a 
livelihood. Some actually perished under tor- 
ture. Seventy of them were suffocated in the 
ancient Fort Santiago, right in the city itself. 
More than forty-three hundred^ were at one time 
waiting trial by court-martial. Accused persons 
came from other ports in shiploads, bound hand 
and foot, confined in the hot, stifling holds ; and 
when they arrived at Manila, freight cranes were 
turned over the hatches, hooks were let down 
into the darkness between decks and attached 
to the prisoners one by one, who were then 
hauled high in the air, swung out over the 
wharf, and dropped down exactly like so many 
bales of hemp. 

The wealthiest men in Manila were incar- 
cerated. Nobody with money could hope to 
escape. No demon could be hated or feared 
as was the friar. But he took no backward 
course, only grew more and more relentless. 
Rizal wrote in the Spanish tongue his Noli me 
tangere [Touch me not], which exposed the inner 
life of these oppressive priests. It was the 
match that produced the explosion, for when 
the Spanish officials, although they did all they 
could to save him, yielded to the demands of 
the church and had him shot on the Luneta in 
Manila, they sealed the doom of Spanish domin- 

^ Foreman, "The Philippine Islands," p. 377. 



6o THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

ion in the Islands. "Death to the Friars" was 
the oriflamme. Aguinaldo, with a pecuHar 
talent for promoting organization, and reputed 
to possess anting-anting, a mystic power that 
would refract a bullet or a knife, sprang to the 
fore, and in less than a year had the Spaniards 
suing for peace. In December, 1897, he and 
thirty-four of his leaders agreed in a written 
contract with the Spanish authorities in consid- 
eration of eight hundred and fifty thousand dol- 
lars, of which two hundred thousand dollars was 
paid him in cash advance, to leave the Islands, not 
to return until Spain consented. Aguinaldo was 
to receive two hundred thousand dollars more, 
but Spain defaulted the amount, together with 
all the rest of the balance, and no one of the 
thirty-five retiring patriots except Aguinaldo 
appears to have received a dollar. He got all 
there was. It is maintained by his friends that 
he expended part of this money in purchasing 
arms for his second revolution. 

In this rebellion atrocities altogether foreign 
to civilized people were common. One friar 
was cut up in small pieces, the operation all 
carefully arranged so that his life would last 
as long as possible. Another was saturated 
with oil and set aflame. Another was bathed in 
oil and fried over a slow fire on a bamboo spit 
that was run through him in such a manner as 
not to be fatal of itself. A requiem Mass 



THE PROBLEM IN 1898 61 

celebrated this last. About sixteen miles from 
Manila, the natives caught a Spanish lieutenant 
and murdered him. They then seized his 
widow and eleven-year-old daughter. The lat- 
ter they ravished to death, and were burying 
the former alive when, a raving maniac, she was 
rescued. 

But before Aguinaldo had been gone six 
months, and although their old leaders had been 
bought off as described, the natives were again 
in the field ; then Dewey sailed into Manila 
Bay — and we were in the Philippines. 



CHAPTER II 

WE BEGIN 

Our international obligations — President McKinley 
sends the Schurman Commission to study the 
Islands — Schurman Commission reports natives 
incompetent for self-government and that anarchy 
would follow their ascension to power — The Taft 
Commission makes a similar finding — Particulars 
of our governmental system — Extraordinary 
powers given the local government by American 
Congress — Remarkable number of natives in 
their government in 1903. 

Under the law of nations as accepted by all 
civilized peoples, the surrender of Manila to 
our forces made it incumbent upon us to pro- 
vide for the security of persons and property 
found therein.^ The obligation that had been 
Spain's passed to us. Germany had five war- 

1 Sec. III. of The Hague Second Convention, on Military Au- 
thority over Hostile Territory. "Art. XLH. Territory is con- 
sidered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority 
of the hostile army." 

"Art. XLHI. The authority of the legitimate power having 
actually passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall 
take all steps in his power to reestablish and insure, as far as pos- 
sible, public order and safety." 

62 



WE BEGIN 63 

ships in Manila harbor to see that we performed 
this duty. France had several of hers there, 
and so had England, for the same purpose; 
and others watched our every movement — 
until Dewey was reenforced, and then they 
moved away. 

"A hostile territory, subdued by the armies 
of the United States, does not pass under the 
dominion either of its constitution or its laws. 
. . . While war continues, it is the military 
duty of the President as commander-in-chief, 
to provide for the security of persons and prop- 
erty, and for the administration of justice."^ 

Such was the duty of President McKinley 
while the Spanish War continued, and when 
that ended with the cession to us of all the 
Archipelago, it became the measure of his 
obligation toward all the peoples therein; and 
such it continued to be during the struggle 
with Aguinaldo which followed immediately 
and endured for more than two years, until 
the summer of 1901. 

To the performance of this delicate task 
Mr. McKinley proceeded with that caution 
which was so prominent a characteristic of his 
nature. There was a remarkable dearth of 
reliable literature upon these islands so un- 
ceremoniously deposited in our keeping, and 
before we had come into formal possession of 
^Taylor, "International Public Law," Section 579. 



64 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

them, the President had dispatched across the 
Pacific to study the situation what is known as 
the Schurman Commission. Its members were 
the President of Cornell University, Jacob G. 
Sohurman, an authority upon such problems, 
Rear-admiral Dewey, Major-general Otis, both 
of whom had been months on the ground, 
Charles Denby, our Minister to China for the 
preceding thirteen years, and Professor Dean C. 
Worcester of Ann Arbor, an ornithological ex- 
pert, who had twice headed important expedi- 
tions to study among these very people. They 
assembled in Manila in March, 1899. They 
invited testimony from every source and re- 
ported in January of the following year with 
the following : 

"Their (the Filipinos') lack of education and 
political experience, combined with their racial 
and linguistic diversities, disqualify them, in 
spite of their mental gifts and domestic vir- 
tues, to undertake the task of governing the 
archipelago at the present time. . . . Should 
our power, by any fatality, be withdrawn, 
the commission believes that the government 
of the Philippines would speedily lapse into 
anarcJiy, which would excuse, if it did not 
necessitate, the intervention of other powers, 
and the eventual division of the islands among 
them. Only through American occupation, 
therefore, is the idea of a free, self-governing, 
and united Philippine commonwealth at all 
conceivable." 



WE BEGIN 6s 

A month after this conclusion was in his 
hands, McKinley, still acting under the war 
powers of this nation, appointed a second com- 
mission, endowing it, a civilian agency, with 
the powers of a military government. This 
Commission was headed by the senior circuit 
judge of the country, W. JI. Taft, who was 
selected as the best available manior the posi- 
tion; Bernard Moses, of the Chair of History 
and Political Economy of the University of 
California, Professor Worcester, Luke E.Wright, 
a distinguished lawyer, and the Chief Justice 
of Samoa, Henry C. Ide, were the remaining 
members. They were, as was the first Commis- 
sion, of the different political parties. Even 
in the heat of national campaigns in which the 
Philippines have been an important issue, it 
has never been suggested that we could have 
sent stronger men. After some months in the 
Islands, they reported as follows, in a resume : 

"Manila, August 21, 1900. 
"Secretary of War, 

"Washington, D.C. 

"Replying to dispatch. Commission reports; 
It has for two months and a half made diligent 
Inquiries Into conditions prevailing. Change 
of policy by turning Islands over to a coterie 
of Tagalog politicians will blight their fair 
prospects of enormous Improvement, drive out 
capital, make life and property — secular and 



66 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

religious — most insecure, banish by fear of 
cruel proscription considerable body of con- 
servative Filipinos who have aided Americans 
in well-founded belief that their people are 
not now fit for self-government, and rein- 
troduce the same oppression and corruption 
which existed in all provinces under Malolos 
government during the eight months of their 
control. The result will be factional strife 
between jealous leaders, chaos, and anarchy, 
and will require and justify active intervention 
of our government or some other." ^ 

There seemed no escape from the unanimity 
of judgment of these two able commissions, and 
the President accepted them as conclusive; 
and in his "Instructions of the President to 
the Philippine Commission," dated April 7, 
1900, Mr. McKinley said: 

"The articles of capitulation of the city of 
Manila on the 13th of August, 1898, concluded 
with these words : 'This city, its inhabitants, 
its churches and religious worship, its educa- 
tional establishments, and its private property 
of all descriptions are placed under the special 
safeguard of the faith and honor of the American 
army.' I believe that this pledge has been 
faithfully kept. As high and sacred an obliga- 
tion rests upon the government of the United 
States to give protection for life and property, 
civil and religious freedom, and wise, firm, 
and unselfish guidance in the paths of peace 
and prosperity to all the people of the Philip- 

^ 1900, Report Secretary of War, pp. 80-82. 



WE BEGIN (>^ 

pine Islands. I charge this Commission to 
labor for the full performance of this obliga- 
tion, which concerns the honor and conscience 
of their country, in the firm hope that through 
their labor all the inhabitants of the Philip- 
pine Islands may come to look back with grati- 
tude to the day when God gave victory to 
American arms at Manila and set their land 
under the sovereignty and the protection of 
the people of the United States. . . . 

"You (the Secretary of War) will instruct 
the Commission to devote their attention in 
the first instance to the establishment of munici- 
pal governments, in which the natives of the 
islands, both in the cities and in the rural com- 
munities, shall be afforded the opportunity to 
manage their own local affairs to the fullest 
extent to which they are capable, and subject 
to the least degree of supervision and control 
which a careful study of their capacities and 
observation of the working of native control 
show to be consistent with the maintenance of 
law, order, and loyalty. . . . 

"In all forms of government and adminis- 
trative provisions which they are authorized 
to prescribe, the Commission should bear in 
mind that the government which they are 
establishing is designed not for our satisfaction, 
nor for the oppression of our theoretical views, 
but for the happiness, peace, and prosperity 
of the people of the Philippine Islands." ^ 

The Secretary of War, Root, in his annual 
report for 1901 interpreted these instructions 
as directing the Commission : 

^ 1900, Report Secretary of War, p. 72. 



68 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

"To steadily press forward as rapidly as it 
can be done safely and thoroughly, the gradual 
substitution of government through civil agents 
for government through military agents, so 
that the administration of the military officer 
shall be continually narrowed, and that of the 
civil officer continually enlarged, until the 
time comes when the army can, without im- 
periling the peace and order of the country, 
be relegated to the same relation toward gov- 
ernment which it occupies in the United States." 

Those were the specific, binding instructions 
upon our representatives, and it is submitted 
that they are unexampled in the history of 
colonization. Their spirit is further empha- 
sized by an address of Mr. McKinley, not long 
before his assassination, at San Francisco, where 
he said : 

"These Philippine Islands are ours, not to 
subjugate, but to emancipate ; not to rule in 
the power of might, but to take to those dis- 
tant people the principles of liberty, of free- 
dom of conscience, and of opportunity that are 
enjoyed by the people of the United States." 

Manila was immediately established as the 
seat of government as represented by the Taft 
Commission, and the task of setting up a civil 
administration throughout the Islands was 
undertaken with all dispatch. The legislative 
powers were conferred upon this Commission, 
the judicial powers were exercised by the courts 



WE BEGIN 69 

created by the Commission in its legislative 
capacity, and the executive authority was left 
in the commander of the military forces of the 
United States still occupying the country. 

The scope of the legislative authority resi- 
dent in the Commission was defined in the in- 
structions as follows : 

"Exercise of this legislative authority will 
include the making of rules and orders, having 
the effect of law, for the raising of revenues 
by taxes, customs, and duties, and imposts ; 
the appropriation and expenditure of public 
funds of the islands ; the establishment of an 
educational system throughout the islands ; 
the establishment of a system to secure an 
efficient civil service ; the organization and 
establishment of courts ; the organization and 
establishment of municipal and departmental 
governments ; and all other matters of a civil 
nature for which the military governor is now 
competent to provide by rules or orders of a 
legislative character." 

The sessions of the Commission when acting 
as a legislature were often open and at stated 
periods. Their enactments were publicly in- 
troduced and published as bills upon which 
action was proposed. If the matter was of public 
interest, hearings were announced and' the na- 
tives urged to express their views. Often, when- 
ever the general weal seemed to demand it, these 
measures were publicly debated and voted upon. 



70 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

By June, 1901, public order having been estab- 
lished to a sufficient degree, authority to exer- 
cise the executive powers was transferred from 
the military to the president of the Commission ; 
continuing, however, the former's jurisdiction 
in such parts of the Islands as were still overrun 
by the remnants of the insurrection. July 4, 
1 901, Mr. Taft was inaugurated first civil 
governor of the Philippines, and two months 
later he created departments of the interior, 
of commerce, of police, of finance and justice, 
and of public instruction, distributing these 
among the other members of the Commission. 
At the same time, three learned natives were 
added to the body, constituting five Americans 
and three Filipinos. 

Appropriate legislation was enacted for a 
thorough organization of the entire Archipelago 
into provinces (counties we should call them) 
containing municipalities. A modern judicial 
system was predicated. 

An insular constabulary and municipal police 
were created, the commissioned officers Ameri- 
cans, but all the men natives. A civil service 
law was early put into operation, covering 
practically all except the very highest appoint- 
ments. Government finances were guarded 
by a modern system of account and audit. 
A comprehensive system of education for the 
entire Archipelago was instituted, and teachers 



WE BEGIN 71 

were hurried from America by the hundreds. 
Forestry laws were adopted and an extensive 
system of public works entered upon. Revenues 
for governmental purposes were provided for 
in duties and taxes, the imposition of which 
was not opposed. 

Municipalities were made the political unit, 
and each town that was not in the wild tribe 
country was provided with a charter. Under 
this document the rule of the municipality 
devolves upon a president, a vice-president, 
and a municipal council, all chosen by the 
qualified electorate therein resident, to serve 
for two years and until their successors qualified. 
The electorate is composed of males above the 
age of twenty-three who have a legal residence 
there for six months last preceding the date of 
the election, who are not subjects of a foreign 
power, and who have one of the following three 
qualifications: i. Had filled one of several 
designated petty offices during the Spanish 
regime (thus showing some degree of learning 
or stability) ; 2. Owned real property to the 
value of two hundred and fifty dollars (gold) or 
who annually paid taxes to the aggregate value 
of fifteen dollars (gold); 3. Could speak, read, 
and write English or Spanish. 

Of these municipalities there were at first 1035 
with as many presidents, 2906 secretaries and 
treasurers, and 8159 members of the town councils. 



72 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

All of the foregoing were by 1904 chosen by 
the electorate just defined, and each was a 
Filipino. Then these thousand municipalities 
were divided among thirty-four provinces con- 
taining all of the people in the Islands except 
the wild men and the Moros, while these were 
comprehended in five districts and a Moro 
province. The organization of the thirty-four 
provinces is as follows : Their government 
consists of five officers — governor, treasurer, 
secretary, supervisor, and a fiscal or prosecuting 
attorney. The governing body, called the pro- 
vincial board, is composed of the governor, the 
treasurer, and the supervisor. The first duty 
of this board Is to collect the taxes from the 
various municipalities in that province. Its 
second function and the one that proves to be 
the most important, is the supervision of con- 
struction of highways, public buildings, and 
bridges. Its third duty is a supervision of the 
officials of the municipalities. 

The governor (provincial) has the power to 
suspend any municipal officer who appears to be 
delinquent, and he has to visit at least twice a 
year the various municipalities to hear any com- 
plaints against the local officials. He was in 1904 
elected biennially, by a convention composed of 
the members of the various town councils in the 
province. The only restriction upon their choice 
was that he be confirmed by the Commission. 



WE BEGIN 73 

Upon the first Monday in February, 1904, 
an election was held in all but two of the thirty- 
four provinces, and all except one of the gov- 
ernors so chosen were natives. The remaining 
provincial officials who had any real authority 
were 86 Americans and 238 Filipinos. 

The Moro Province consists of Mindanao and 
adjacent islands, except the provinces of Surigao 
and Misamis, which are rated as comprised 
within the Christian provinces, and also the 
island of Isabela de Basilan and everything to 
the south of Mindanao. The province is cut 
up into five districts, the executive head of all 
being a governor, with a secretary, an attorney, 
an engineer, a superintendent of schools, and 
a treasurer. These officials constitute the leg- 
islative council of the province. 

There remains but the five district provinces, 
viz : Benguet, Lepanto-Bontoc, Mindoro, Nueva 
Viscaya, and Paragua, inhabited largely by wild 
men. Here it is necessary to. appoint all the 
officials. 

Great attention was devoted to the founding 
of a sound and capable judicial system through- 
out the Archipelago. A complete code of pro- 
cedure, equal to any in the United States, was 
enacted by the Commission, which removed at 
one stroke all the delays and uncertain per- 
plexities of the Spanish tribunals. Codes of 
criminal and civil law were also instituted that 



74 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

wiped out the ancient abuses by which private 
individuals could control and compromise crim- 
inal prosecutions, and thus extort blackmail. 
Any authority of the executive branch to con- 
trol the action of the courts, a right that had 
always obtained in the Islands with the Span- 
iards, was rigorously forbidden. A justice and 
an auxiliary justice of the peace was appointed 
in each municipality, while municipal courts 
were instituted in Manila. The Archipelago 
was divided into fifteen judicial districts, in 
each of which there was a court of the first 
instance, with one judge assigned thereto, ex- 
cept that in Manila, because of congestion of 
business, there were four judges and as many 
courts. There were extra judges to preside in 
emergency. As early as 1904, a third of all 
the judges were natives. There was direct 
appeal to the Supreme Court of the Islands, a 
body composed of seven members, three of 
whom were natives. Appeal from this could 
be had directly to the Supreme Court of the 
United States in all matters in which the Con- 
stitution or the privileges or the rights of the 
United States were involved, or in cases in 
which the amount in controversy exceeded 
twenty-five thousand dollars or in which the 
title to or possession of real estate above twenty- 
five thousand dollars was involved. 

We set up a court of customs appeals, con- 



WE BEGIN 75 

sisting of the secretary of finance and justice, 
who presides, a judge of the Supreme Court, 
and a third member appointed by the governor, 
with the advice and consent of the Commission. 

We set up a court of land registration com- 
posed of two judges with jurisdiction through- 
out the entire Islands. It was also a court of 
record. Registrars of deeds were appointed 
in each province and for Manila. From them 
and from the court of land registration, appeals 
could be made to the local court of first instance, 
and from these last to the Supreme Court of the 
Islands and then to that at Washington. 

There was appointed an attorney-general, 
with assistants, and a solicitor-general with 
such duties as are performed by these officials 
in the United States. The former was an 
American, the latter a Filipino. Half the 
assistants were natives, half Americans. 

The local prosecuting officials, corresponding 
to our district attorneys, attached to the gov- 
ernment of the thirty-four provinces, were all 
natives. 

Civil service was attended to at the very out- 
set. Promotion or entrance to any clerical posi- 
tion in the Islands was based solely upon com- 
petitive examinations, except that preference 
was given, first to natives and then to honorably 
discharged soldiers, sailors, or marines of the 
United States. 



'je THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

In order that the institution of this drastic 
measure might not work inextricable confusion 
and hardship among the officers and enlisted 
men who had been detailed for these very duties, 
it was provided that they could continue in 
such positions when mustered out upon passing 
special tests of fitness. The civil service board 
could also continue in office the existing civil 
employees if they were competent to pass the 
examinations. In this manner the incompetents 
were debarred, and only those of character and 
fitness permitted to remain. 
' In the provincial and municipal governments, 
where a knowledge of English was not essential, 
the Filipinos had little difficulty in filling prac- 
tically every position. 

As an incentive to encourage Americans to 
enter this Oriental service, examinations for 
it were opened throughout the United States 
under the United States Civil Service Com- 
mission, and it was provided early in 1903 by 
an act of Congress that officers or employees 
who had served in a competitive position in 
the Philippine civil service for three or more 
years could by application be transferred to sim- 
ilar positions in the United States. Thus was 
provision early made for recuperation of all who 
might go out there and find the climate too 
onerous. It yet remains for the United States 
to adopt so general a civil service law as that 



WE BEGIN ^^ 

which obtains In these island possessions, where 
from the very first there has never been a sug- 
gestion of any spoils system. England only 
adopted civil service after her representatives 
had Instituted it in India and seen its advan- 
tages. For the workings of a complete sys- 
tem, we shall have to adopt the law of the 
Philippines. 

As a final aid to the Islands, their govern- 
ment was authorized to exercise several powers 
of sovereignty which had hitherto never been 
conferred upon any of our States or territories 
or other possessions. For example. Congress 
conveyed to the Philippine government all the 
public property of the Archipelago which we 
acquired from Spain, including public buildings, 
streets, parks, roads, the submerged soil of the 
coast, the beds of streams, the mineral wealth, 
the immense tropical forests filled with precious 
timber as valuable as any. Congress also au- 
thorized the Philippine government to issue its 
own currency. It was authorized to direct 
and control its own postal service. It was al- 
lowed to levy tariffs upon goods entering island 
ports consigned from American ports, and this 
in time of peace. 

Before we had been at work with a civil gov- 
ernment quite two years, we were able to make 
the following showing of our intention to put 
the Filipinos into their own governmental 



7B THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

machine just as rapidly as they proved fit for 
the task: 

Table Showing Number of Filipinos and Americans 
Employed under the Government of the Philippine 
Islands in 1903 





Americans 


Filipinos 


Members of the Philippine Commission 


s 


3 


Justices of the Supreme Court 


4 


3 


Judges of the court of first instance 


16 


7 


Judges of the court of customs appeals 


I 


I 


Judges of the court of land registration 


I 


I 


Justices of the peace and auxiliary jus- 






tices of the peace 




1,708 


Civil service of the general government 


1,777 


2,697 


Governors of provinces 


8 


32 


Other provincial officials 


86 


238 


Municipal presidents (mayors) 




982 


Municipal councilors 




8,159 


Municipal secretaries-treasurers 




2,906 


Total 


1,898 


16,737 


Municipal school-teachers 




3,500 


English teachers 


1,000 




Total 


1,000 


3,500 


Municipal police 




10,000 


Philippines constabulary 


^4^ 


7,000 


Total 


34S 


17,000 



This table does not include the Philippine 
Scouts, which were a part of the military estab- 
lishment of the United States, the commissioned 
officers of which were Americans, and the non- 



WE BEGIN 79 

commissioned officers and other enlisted force, 
of which five thousand were Filipinos ; nor does 
it include the large number of unskilled em- 
ployees of the Philippine government, all of 
whom were Filipinos, employed in such places 
as the street-cleaning department of the city of 
Manila, the work of the Benguet road, the office 
of the insular purchasing agent, the board of 
health, etc. 

That is, there were 40,480 employees of the 
Philippine government, — 37,237 natives and 
3243 Americans. 

The United States Congress examined each of 
the statutes and enactments of the Philippine 
Commission by which the governmental ma- 
chine here described was set in motion, and con- 
firmed them all ; and, by special act passed in 
1902, promised the Filipinos that two years 
after the completion of a general census, they 
should have an election by which to choose 
delegates to a popular assembly conformable to 
our lower house of Congress. 

By the time Mr. Taft was ready to leave the 
Islands, in January, 1904, we had completed 
the installation of a stable, considerate, rep- 
resentative government. 



CHAPTER III 

THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE 

General Otis opens schools eighteen days after our 
occupation begins — Profound effect of this upon 
natives — Teaching of English a reversal of 
Spain's policy — A thousand teachers come from 
America — Why English was made only medium 
of education — Sacrifices and services of early 
American instructors — Statistics of educational 
transformation — The native teacher — Each pu- 
pil given manual training — Filipinos yet desirous 
of only primary education — Lack of funds — 
Remarkable influence of introduction of athletic 
sports. 

We have already seen that the schools in the 
Islands during the Spanish regime were of 
little practical value, and that it was a deliber- 
ate policy of the friars to use such as were there 
in a manner to deter the acquisition of real 
education rather than to promote it. 

Within two weeks of the capitulation of 
Manila to our military forces, General Otis 
personally had selected and ordered modern 
text-books as the first step in opening schools 
in the Islands. Eighteen days after Manila 
fell, seven schools were opened there under 

80 



THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE 8i 

the direction of one of our army chaplains, 
although it was months before we knew the 
Philippines were to be transferred to us. 

These acts had much effect upon the natives, 
who were wondering what sort of people we 
were. Non-commissioned officers of the army 
were assigned as school-teachers, and the teach- 
ing of English especially advanced. This pro- 
duced a profound sensation. Word of it spread 
with great rapidity, for it portended a revolu- 
tion, if the Americans were to retain the Islands. 
It meant that the great mass of the common 
people were to be taught the language of their 
rulers, a complete overturn of anything the 
Filipinos had ever known. That would enable 
the mass of the tribes, in time, to read news- 
papers and books and laws. It would enable 
them to learn everything that the ruling class 
had acquired ; and as the natives believed that 
the rich had become so by superior knowledge, 
the Filipino seemed almost at the gates of the 
Promised Land. 

The Spanish attitude toward this innovation 
was typical of that of some other nations which 
had Far Eastern colonies. General Otis was in- 
formed that an attempt to introduce universal 
education was not only sure to end in armed 
uprisings, but was bound to fail, for the natives 
would refuse to attend schools that were not 
under the charge of the clergy. 



^'^ 



82 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

But we went ahead just the same, and we 
continued to go ahead, even more rapidly 
when Aguinaldo attacked us in February, 
1899. Two months after that event, we had 
an army officer, a Yale graduate, as superin- 
tendent of the Manila schools, of which there 
were then thirty-nine in active operation. He 
knew his work thoroughly, and it took but 
little time to see that the people, instead of 
refusing to send their children to secular schools, 
greatly preferred them ; thus, although we were 
in the very hottest of the insurrection, our 
army had about a thousand schools crowded 
with pupils long before the civil government 
took over the army's task in June, 1901. By 
the first of the preceding September, General 
Otis had expended more than twice as much 
for text-books and supplies as Spain spent for 
all school charges of every nature during some 
entire years just preceding 1898 in all the 
Islands outside of Manila. 

In the late summer of 1900, Fred. W. Atkin- 
son, one of the most renowned educational 
experts in the United States, landed in the 
Islands with the appointment of general super- 
intendent of public instruction, with no direc- 
tions except to secure progress. An organizer 
of the first class, he had the Commission pass 
an organic act upon January 21, 1901, that laid 
a broad foundation for a thoroughly modern 



THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE 83 

system of schooling in every corner of the 
Archipelago. The responsibilities resting upon 
the superintendent were very grave. He was 
given carte blanche as to when and where he 
would establish schools. He could appoint 
all assistants, all teachers, prescribe their duties, 
the curricula they should teach, and fix their 
salaries within certain broad limitations. In a 
word, the task was unique, for it was to estab- 
lish a complete system of public instruction 
among more than seven million people who 
never up to that time had had any system 
at all. It was a great opportunity, and the 
last decade has shown that the right man was 
chosen to do the work. 

One of the first big things done was to send 
to the United States for a thousand teachers, 
who had to meet a high standard of require- 
ment. In 1901 they came over in small num- 
bers up to August, when six hundred arrived 
in one transport. In twenty days they were 
on their way to their new work, and from that 
time English became the only medium of in- 
struction. For this regulation, which has been 
warmly criticized, there were several reasons, 
all of which are now so buttressed by later 
events that probably nobody is to be found who 
would have it altered. First, English, more 
than any other language, is that of commerce 
in the Far East, and its use is becoming more 



84 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

general with each day. That it is bound to be 
the universal tongue of that part of the world 
cannot longer be disputed. To those who have 
felt that Spanish should have been continued, 
the response is that there was no Spanish that 
could cause serious consideration, among the 
mass of people, as we have already set forth. 
Then it was evident that it would be a number 
of years before we could permit these people 
to try to govern themselves, which meant that 
English was for a long time to be the language 
of the official world of the Islands, both written 
and oral, hence the language by which official 
employment and favor could be procured. 
The Islands as a whole not only had no tongue, 
but, what was worse, had many entirely different 
dialects. It was necessary therefore that they 
should have some common language if they 
ever were to become a homogeneous people; 
and in view of the facts just presented, English 
was the best language for them, and the eager- 
ness with which they seized the opportunity 
to acquire it is further evidence of the wisdom 
and correctness of this position. 

The sacrifices incurred by very many of these 
pioneer teachers were tremendous. That more 
did not meet a violent end is matter of wonder- 
^ ment. But they came to give and not to take, 
and that was their chief shield. As a rule, the 
Spanish schoolhouse was not a schoolhouse at 



THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE 85 

all ; it was the home of the teacher, who taught 
in one of his rooms. Frequently there were 
no seats or benches or other furniture. If 
there was a real schoolhouse, it was usually a 
miserable shack of bamboo and nipa, generally 
without a floor and with vile surroundings, 
if it had been in use. Our teachers went to 
work and built schoolhouses, often with their 
own hands, made the benches, and taught the 
most remarkable conglomeration of pupils for 
months at a time without books, slates, or maps. 
Some established their schools under spreading 
trees. The friars were inimical, and against 
the invader all the influence of the church was 
bent, until in many localities natives would 
not send their children to the new school- 
teacher. Then it was the task, perhaps, of a 
slip of an American girl — the only white face 
in miles among thousands of Malays — to go 
from house to house and by her personal force 
overcome this prejudice. Instances were com- 
mon in which the male teacher joined the local 
peasants in ridding the district of ladrones, the 
native term for gentlemen-of-the-road. He 
often ended the oppression of the wealthy by a 
sharp American demand for justice. He urged 
the repair of the roads, and, in a word, in all 
except matters of religion, he enlarged in every 
community in which he was set down, if he 
were worthy of the responsibility, into the pre- 



86 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

dominating place formerly filled by the Spanish 
friar. He easily became the most important 
local force in furthering an understanding of our 
civilization. 

What manual labor these teachers did — 
and they did it in good measure — probably 
excited more comment than any other act. 
The Spaniard, and often the American, regards 
manual labor as a mark of degradation, as a 
sure evidence that the man has not the quali- 
ties to earn more with his head than with his 
hands. The natives took their cue from their 
rulers, whom they believed to be a superior 
race of beings ; and no Spanish official or any 
other Spaniard, if he could avoid it, ever did 
any manual labor where he could be seen by a 
native. So far had the principle become fas- 
tened into the national life of these ignorant 
peoples, that they believed anything that would 
soil their linen or entail perspiration or rapid 
movement was unworthy of civilized beings. 
As a result, the Filipino boys and girls grew up 
without the mental and bodily stimulus of 
emulation by any sort of games. The most 
violent exercise of all their youthful days was 
to march solemnly in slow-moving religious 
processions or to walk about taking the evening 
air. 

The natives argued in their simple way, 
which was not really argument at all, but imi- 



THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE 87 

tation, that the Spaniard was a superior being 
who never did manual labor. Then, if a native 
was to hope to become a superior being, he 
must not do manual labor. 

But here suddenly came in a new race which 
was plainly superior to the Spaniard, for the 
American had whipped him, and these ultra- 
superior visitors, the new rulers, worked with 
their hands, dug in the garden, just like the com- 
mon laborer. They had games that made them 
perspire until their clothing was rumpled and 
they were wet to the skin. 

More than this, these Americans taught 
equality, for they practiced it. In the Spanish 
schools the poor often received little or none 
of the attention of the instructor, because that 
personage received especial favors or pay from 
rich parents. The cultivated man among the 
Filipinos frequently has the greatest contempt 
for those who are condemned to the ignorance 
from which he has escaped. He will make the 
most flowery speeches about the advancement 
of his countrymen, but when approached upon 
the wisdom of attempting their enlightenment, 
he is often found to be an active opponent of 
such a revolutionary proposal. The reason is 
not far to seek. It has already been stated. 
One superintendent of all the schools in the 
Islands has written over his signature that : "In 
the majority of murders committed during the 



88 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

last five years, the murderers, ignorant and 
debased tools, acted from no other motive than 
that they were told by those to whom they 
were economically bound and on whom they 
were dependent, that they must go and kill 
such and such men." The already educated 
Filipino knows he will lose his great power over 
the ignorant just in proportion as they approach 
his level of learning. 

Of course there were failures, many of them, 
in these early days when there was haste in 
selection and imperfect knowledge of conditions 
actually to be met. Then the change ~ from 
many years in the temperate zone to a sudden 
protracted stay in the tropics was apt to be 
very pronounced in its results upon character 
and disposition. The mind and better instincts 
often became blunted by the continuous high 
temperature, which wickedly enough is apt to 
increase natural tendencies in the less worthy 
side of us all. The utter isolation into which 
many of these teachers were relegated became 
a bitter foe, and the effects of the resultant 
homesickness and the lonesomeness upon health 
and habit were sometimes lasting and far-reach- 
ing. If a man went to pieces morally, as he 
too often did, his failure and his example re- 
tarded an understanding of what we were at- 
tempting to accomplish. 

But these unfavorable factors were the ex- 




< ^ 



< 

^ 



W I 

d i 

W c 

D o 

o -S 






THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE 89 

ceptlon, decidedly so, be it recollected ; and 
we may not pay too high praise to the American 
teachers as a class, both men and women. 

To consider the result more in detail, we find 
that there were probably not exceeding 750 
schoolhouses in the Archipelago when we went 
there. Except in the largest towns, they were 
of the rude character just described. Our 
policy now is to build schoolhouses of reenforced 
concrete only, that are far superior to the usual 
rural schoolhouse in the United States. More 
than two hundred and fifty of them are com- 
pleted or in process of building, and they are 
rapidly replacing the three thousand other less 
permanent buildings which we have put up in 
the last ten years. 

In 1898 there were nineteen hundred teachers, 
under Spain. There are now five times as 
many, 9086 to be exact. In 1898 there was one 
teacher to each four thousand people. There 
is now one to each 844. There were less than 
two thousand so-called schools under Spain. 
There are now forty-six hundred that are real 
schools with real teachers and a real educational 
curriculum. Under Spain there was a total en- 
rollment of two hundred and fifty thousand 
pupils. In 191 1 it had risen to six hundred 
and ten thousand. Spain spent various sums of 
money for school expenses, sometimes as low as 
sixty-two thousand dollars in one year early in 



90 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

the decade preceding our coming, and as high as 
two hundred thousand dollars in another at a 
later period. Probably the average founded upon 
these two picked at random is about correct. 
If this be so, we may say that just prior to our 
occupation Spain v/as accustomed to spend 
annually upon the schools of the Islands one 
hundred and thirty thousand dollars. 

Last year there was devoted to this purpose 
by the Insular Government itself more than 
thirteen times as much ; and more than ten times 
as much was spent by the local governments ; 
and the continuance of this record appears to be 
assured. The exact figures for 191 1 were $1,- 
765,958 by the central government and ^1,362,- 
873 by the various local administrations, or 
$3,128,831 in all, nearly twenty-five times what 
we know Spain to have been spending for similar 
purpose. 

In accordance with our announced policy of 
gradually replacing Americans in the service 
with natives, the American school-teachers are 
now but 683, so that we have withdrawn nearly 
one third of the highest number ever at work 
there, which was 926 in May, 1902. Their 
salaries range from two thousand dollars to 
six hundred dollars, averaging slightly in excess 
of eleven hundred dollars. The native in- 
structors average about two hundred dollars 
per annum. 



THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE 91 

The encouragement by every reasonable 
means to add to the number of native teachers 
has been a governmental policy, especially be- 
cause it was realized that the best persons in 
the world to civilize or instruct the natives 
were their own kind. 

It was therefore from the outset a rule of the 
American teachers to give one hour daily to 
teaching Filipino instructors in English and in 
modern methods of school direction. It was 
always held before the native teachers that 
promotion, with better salaries, was entirely 
dependent upon their efHciency; and this made 
them eager to progress and attract favorable 
attention from their superiors. They have all 
along been coming from better and better fam- 
ilies, until now probably no young woman 
native of the Islands, no matter how much 
money her parents possess or how much Spanish 
blood runs through her veins, would consider 
the teaching service beneath her dignity. Their 
influence in the community is largely enhanced 
by their knowledge of English, and American 
ways of doing things. It is they who are sought 
out by visiting officials for intelligent repre- 
sentation of local conditions. It is they who 
act as interpreters in the courts and for the 
presidents. They have taken on a new dig- 
nity and are rising rapidly to meet its require- 
ments and responsibilities. 



92 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

What are known In the United States as 
teachers' institutes, providing courses for 
teachers during the long vacation, which in the 
Islands extends from the middle of March to the 
middle of June, were established from the be- 
ginning. Practically all of the native teachers, 
now more than eight thousand, attend lectures 
which are given by the best instructors obtain- 
able, and which are fully equal to those we have 
in the United States. These bodies usually 
meet in their respective provincial capitals. 
' But it is to the Philippine Normal School, 
at Manila, the successor of the Insular Normal 
School which we organized with the rest of our 
system in the early days, that the Filipinos of 
both sexes look for the teachers' training ; and 
here are taught in the most approved methods 
those branches that the native most needs. 
About a hundred needy students who have al- 
ready taught two years in the Islands are sup- 
ported at public expense in return for later 
services equivalent to the term of their scholar- 
ships. Each of them in addition to his normal 
and academic subjects is taught some branch 
of manual training. Every boy and girl in 
every primary school in the Philippines spends 
a considerable proportion of each day in manual 
work. He puts in this time upon the manufac- 
ture of some article of real value, either for use 
in his own home or for sale. There are no 



THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE 93 

halfway accomplishments tolerated. The work 
must be done well or the pupil is not relieved 
from the task. There are gardens beside the 
schoolhouse, and there a boy may raise vege- 
tables either for sale or for his home. Indoors 
he may make a hat, or a school desk. The girl 
may make a piece of lace, or may embroider a 
handkerchief, which she can do as well as any 
other little woman in all the world, and which 
will find its way into the lace markets of the 
Continent or the United States. In hand weav- 
ing, last year, two hundred and forty-two thou- 
sand pupils were engaged. In loom weaving of «^ 
mats, cloths, etc., there were 2178. In garden- 
ing there were one hundred and two thousand. 
In the making of garments by sewing, in lace 
work, in embroidery, etc., there were sixty-eight 
thousand. In iron and wood work there were 
770. One hundred and thirty-six thousand 
were engaged in the making of pottery, in the 
study of raising poultry, and in other useful 
work for which the student could secure money. 
There were eight large school farms, on which 
more than seven hundred students gave their 
time to farming by the most modern and enlight- 
ened methods. There were six trade schools, 
furnishing the best instruction to 850 advanced 
pupils in drawing, in woodwork, ironwork, and 
the repair thereof. There was a modern college 
of agriculture at Los Banos, near Manila. There 



94 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

was a school of commerce with a four-year course 
that never was able to graduate a pupil, because 
all became competent, before the course was 
completed, to secure good positions that would 
pay so well that they could not resist the temp- 
tation to accept them. 

But undoubtedly one of the greatest boons 
has been the teaching of housekeeping and 
household arts to the native girls in all higher 
primary and all intermediate grades. Here 
each student learns house sanitation, plain 
cooking, and simple sewing, and at once becomes 
in all the neighborhood of her little home an 
oracle and a revolutionary force of the first 
magnitude. Every barefooted woman in the 
barrio, as little hamlets are called, who has no 
representative of her own family to receive 
these lessons, ambles around to sit on her heels 
in the shack of the neighbor whose daughter 
has that opportunity, and watches the intro- 
duction of each new idea that the American 
"schoolmarm" has imparted. These ideas be- 
come the gossip of the entire community, and a 
spirit of emulation stirs the sluggish blood in 
every housewife. 

I have seen the same results in the Feud 
Country in the mountains of Tennessee and 
Kentucky. The return to her native home of 
one little girl, who had been at school down in 
the Blue Grass Country a year or so, left its 



THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE 95 

marked impress in every house in that portion 
of the mountains. Rugs began to appear on 
bare floors. Flowers sprang up beside every 
door. Toilet conveniences, while crude, still 
showed great advance. Bared feet became 
covered, and the woman who used to smoke 
a corncob threw it away. She tidied up her 
dress with each evening. The tablecloth came 
in, and the chickens were fed outside, instead 
of waiting beneath the dining table as formerly. 
All of these indications you may see to-day in 
the Philippines from one end to the other. 

The night schools were opened in Manila in 
September, 1900, and their immediate crowd- 
ing suggested that here was an important way 
of reaching the people at large who could not 
attend the regular schools in the daytime. 
Within three months they had an enrollment of 
more than nineteen hundred. Clerks, mer- 
chants, newspaper reporters, janitors, laborers, 
and barbers — every kind of a wage-earner in 
the city — crowded the rooms, so that many had 
to be turned away. In another year a night 
school was opened in every town, with the 
rarest exception, in which there was an American 
teacher. Some of these taught higher arith- 
metic, geography, history, bookkeeping, stenog- 
raphy, typewriting, and telegraphy. In these 
advanced courses Filipinos are now being pre- 
pared for their civil service examination while 



96 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

they are doing their regular work in the day- 
schools. 

vin the provincial night schools, the learning 
of English has always been the principal object 
in view. Here one may see the poorest field 
laborer and the president of the barrio, and in 
several cases even the provincial governor. 
The average age of the night pupils through- 
out the Islands is approximately twenty-three 
years. 

In 1903, 102 native students were brought to 
the United States to be educated here at the 
expense of the Filipino government. Since 
that date, forty-three has been the largest 
number sent on a similar mission, and last year 
there was but one. At no time in the last six 
years has the number exceeded eight. The 
scheme as at first conducted can hardly be 
considered an unqualified success, but with 
higher requirements in candidates it is expected 
that the plan may be made of great benefit. 
The governor-general may appoint with or 
without examination, and as a result those 
who first came were often unequal to what was 
expected of them. Upon their return it was at 
once evident that they had not secured much 
real education. In many instances they were 
shown too great favoritism in the institutions 
to which they were assigned, had as a matter of 
fact been promoted without having done the 




Present Type of Smaller Concrete School House. 




Present Type of Larger Concrete School House. 



THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE 97 

work that would justify it, and actually harmed 
our work in the Islands by what they had 
learned or thought they had learned of our 
institutions. The truth is, that trained only 
in the Spanish methods, they were never quali- 
fied to enter our colleges, although received with 
open arms by them. Later appointees, however, 
are reversing this record, and have in some in- 
stances won extraordinary marks. 

Speaking of the Filipino native teachers as a 
whole, they have as yet only been able to teach 
in the primary and intermediate grades. Of 
the 9086 native teachers, but 492 were found 
competent in 191 1 to teach students who had 
had more than seven years of schooling, — 
four years in primary and three in the inter- 
mediate. In 1910 just twenty-five per cent 
of the 9086 native teachers had themselves 
completed the primary and intermediate schools. 
In 191 1 the figure increased to twenty-eight per 
cent, and it will probably be more favorable 
with each year to come, as the emulation for 
preferment is constantly increasing. 

We must not construe, however, this rela- 
tively poor education of the Filipino native 
teacher as any reflection upon the only work 
in which he may be said to be engaged, for 
education in the Islands is yet in the primary 
school, as figures will demonstrate, viz. : there 
are now 41 21 primary schools, with 582,115 



98 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

pupils ; 245 intermediate, with 24,974 pupils ; 
and 38 high schools (entered after seven years 
of schooling), with but 3404 scholars. 

In the primary school the aim is to teach the 
student to understand, read, and write simple 
English, to give him a sufficient knowledge of 
figures so that he can later protect himself in 
business, and to provide him with a small 
fund of information regarding geography, sani- 
tation, hygiene, government, and standards of 
correct conduct. In addition, the pupil is 
taught sufficient manual training to enable 
him to be a better laborer than those who have 
not had this instruction. A perusal of the 
above figures will show that only one student 
in thirty pursues his education after completing 
the primary four years' course. Indeed, it is a 
further fact that the great majority of the pri- 
mary scholars never complete their four years in 
that first schoolroom. The figures above also 
show that about one in every two hundred in the 
primary school will enter the high school. And 
it must be said that there is no present tendency 
observable that will indicate any material altera- 
tion in those proportions.^ 

Thus it is that we are endeavoring to give the 
Filipino in the first four years of his schooling 
those things that will best help him in after life, 
for that is going to be his sole educational equip- 

1 Eleventh Annual Report Director Education, p. 19. 



THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE 99 

ment for many years, unless there be a com- 
pulsory system equivalent to our own. Such a 
system could be made possible if there were 
funds sufficient. But there are not funds suffi- 
cient even for this little we are trying to do. 
Indeed, there is not nearly enough money 
adequately to pay the larger part of the native 
teachers, who are dependent upon the salaries 
of the municipality or province in which they 
are employed. Eight thousand of the total 
native teaching force of 9086 are in the pay of 
the local government as distinguished from 
that of the Insular Government. Their average 
remuneration is ^9.25 gold per month. In three 
large provinces the average is less than six 
dollars per month. An increase of even $2.50 
a month would add a quarter of a million to the 
expenses, and no such sum can be found. And 
in the face of this showing, it is to be noted that 
probably not one town in the Islands has 
adequate school buildings for its school popula- 
tion. In Union Province alone, in 191 1, 
more than four thousand pupils were refused 
admittance to the primary schools because there 
was no room for them. So eager were they 
for work that those who did obtain entrance 
maintained an actual daily attendance of eighty- 
five per cent of the total enrollment — a very 
remarkable showing in any community. 
The Islands can now, with such schools 



loo THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

as have been mentioned, offer to about a third 
of the children of school age eleven years in the 
public schools. From these, pupils may go to 
the University of the Philippines in Manila, 
under American professors, where there are 
courses in the Liberal Arts, Medicine and 
Surgery, Agriculture, Veterinary Science, Law, 
Engineering, and the Fine Arts. There are 
now more than twelve hundred students in 
attendance. 

A glance over the accomplishments of the 
decade in education, as stated by those most 
prominent in its direction, will be apt to give 
the introduction of athletics to the Filipino 
boys and girls the leading place among all our 
civilizing elements. The first game of baseball 
that the islanders ever saw was between teams 
of our soldiers in 1898. In the few years since 
that time, the sport has become ingrafted into 
the Filipino taste as firmly as in that of the 
American schoolboy. Many of the school- 
houses — probably five hundred — in the Is- 
lands have a baseball diamond beside them. 
And let no American suppose that the game has 
lost by its long journey nor think that we can 
teach them about its finer points. Take it all 
in all, they play with greater spirit than our 
boys, and they were especially jubilant in 191 1 
because their best team outplayed the best that 
the American schoolboys could present. The 



THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE loi 

increased self-respect and manliness shown by 
all who engage in these contests is very notable ; 
and the hollow, narrow, thin, flat chest that was 
the mark of the more civilized Filipino boys is 
being replaced by the broader torso of the ath- 
lete. A hundred organized, uniformed, fully 
equipped baseball teams in a province is not 
unusual, and the provinces now compete against 
each other for the championship of ,the Islands. 
In the contest for this distinction in 191 1, it 
took over twelve hundred games between 482 
teams to decide the issue. 

But it is not alone those directly on the field 
who are being influenced. The entire popula- 
tion has developed into fans and rooters, as the 
terms of the game call the enthusiasts ; and no 
more lively audience than that which attends 
the important games in the Islands can be 
found upon the Polo Grounds in New York. 
The partisans are intense and implacable, and 
there is nothing remaining of what has come 
to be known as the Oriental reserve after the 
umpire has deprived the pitcher of a strike. 

The language of the bleachers in New York 
and in Manila is quite the same, for the Filipino 
was given no epithets in his native tongues ; and 
the first words he learned from us were ejacula- 
tions of that character, which he employs with 
astonishing fluency and unction. 

General athletic associations with competi- 



102 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

tive events such as sprints, jumps, pole vaults, 
and all the list of our own scholastic organiza- 
tions are now established in many parts of the 
Islands, and they compete for the Island cham- 
pionship in Manila each winter. 

The girls have taken up basket ball with so 
much enthusiasm that it is plain the sport is 
to be a feature in every school. In short, 
athletics have so crowded in, that educational 
departments have had to take charge of them 
just as in the United States, and contests are 
now conducted upon a uniform basis as to 
eligibility and rules. These regulations are 
issued in an athletic handbook from the office 
of the Director of Education. 

If we go deep enough, we will undoubtedly 
find that the great eagerness displayed by the 
Filipinos for knowledge is due to their desire to 
make a living with their heads instead of their 
hands. They probably proceed upon the theory 
that the former is easier than the latter and 
therefore much to be preferred. Granted that 
this is their premise, it is not much different 
from the idea of the more cilivized peoples. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE FRIAR LANDS 

One of the most Important problems in the Islands 

— Friars so hated that all had to fly to Manila in 
1898 — The Pope consents to their withdrawal 

— The Insular Government pays $7,227,000 
gold — Impossibility of disposing of the lands 
because of agitation against capital. 

As the Friar Lands have constituted one of the 
most acute problems that we have had to face 
in the Islands, we must give at least the out- 
lines of it. 

The main facts are that there were some 
750 regular parishes in the Archipelago, all of 
which, except 150, were administered by Span- 
ish monks of the Dominican, Augustinian, or 
Franciscan Orders. Natives could not secure 
admission to these Orders. The Augustinians 
were of two classes, the shod and the unshod, 
the latter being termed Recoletos. During the 
outburst of hatred against these priests in the 
turbulence of 1 896-1 898, they all fled to Manila, 
for their very lives. Forty were killed and 
more than four hundred were imprisoned, in 

103 



104 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

which state they continued until our arms be- 
came so irresistible that the natives could no 
longer retain their control of the jails in which 
these holy men were confined. With all of the 
minor priests, their total number was 1124 at 
the beginning of hostilities. Before we had 
captured Aguinaldo, in March, 1901, but 472 
remained in the Islands, the balance having 
been killed, or having died, returned to Spain, 
or gone to China or to South America. 

As soon as we had established authority In the 
former parishes of these 472 priests, a fierce 
discussion arose as to whether or not they 
should be permitted to return to their former 
stations. It was perfectly evident to our rep- 
resentatives that if they did go back many 
would be assassinated; and in the end, as their 
return could only be effected by us, we should 
become the unwilling heirs of that hatred of the 
priests. If the priests did not return to their 
parishes, they certainly would lose their im- 
mense properties, which constituted some of 
the best lands in the Islands, amounting in all 
to 403,713 acres. ^ These were in the main 
rented to thousands of people who refused to 
pay anything for them as soon as they drove 

1 The Franciscans were unable, because of their rules, to pos- 
sess any property, and they therefore had no agricultural lands 
and no real estate except dwellings for members, two monasteries, 
and two infirmaries. 



THE FRIAR LANDS 105 

the friars into Manila. The Orders applied 
to our government to send an armed force to 
collect the rents or to eject the delinquent 
tenants. The United States of America have 
never done things in that fashion, and the 
Orders were told that they could obtain relief 
only through the courts, where they would 
stand just as any other party seeking their aid. 
That intensified the situation, for by their 
rules the friars were forbidden to sue in a court of 
law. Under Spain, when they wanted things of 
this character done, all they had to do was to 
notify the governor-general, and he would send 
troops to obtain by force such redress as they 
had indicated. 

' The most cursory investigation shows that 
every abuse which finally led to the two rev- 
olutions of 1896 and 1898 was charged by the 
natives as a whole to the friars. If we had 
inflicted the same priests upon the people who 
had so recently driven them out, the natives 
at large would have been sure to conclude that 
a friar under the United States was just the 
same as a friar under Spain. All the informa- 
tion we could obtain was to the effect that the 
adoption of such a course would lead to a 
recurrence of the disorder that had led to their 
previous flight to the capital city. In efi'ect, 
we should have another insurrection upon our 
hands. 



io6 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

Confronted with these conditions, we took 
up the subject with the Pope, who by agree- 
ment with us in December, 1899, sent the 
Archbishop of New Orleans as an apostolic 
delegate to the Islands to endeavor to effect an 
adjustment of the difficulties. He became, 
however, so warm an adherent to the friars' 
position as to nullify the hope that he could be 
of service as an arbitrator. He joined hands 
with Nozaleda, the Archbishop of Manila, and 
bitterly opposed the efforts of the native clergy 
to compel the expulsion of every friar. The 
controversy became so acute as to result in the 
imprisonment for two months of the chief 
clerical exponent of the native position, by the 
priests who opposed it, and nobody can say 
when he might have been released, had not his 
contentions been suddenly upheld by Rome, 
whose attitude throughout the whole pro- 
ceeding was considerate and fair. Governor 
Taft, and in fact all of the Commission, early 
became convinced that the only way to get the 
friars out was to buy them out; and when he 
visited the United States, early in 1902, he had 
little difficulty in convincing Congress as to 
the wisdom of this course. The act of that 
body upon July i, 1902, commonly called the 
^'Philippine Government Act,'^ authorized the 
necessary issue of bonds by the Insular Govern- 
ment with which to complete the transaction, 



THE FRIAR LANDS 107 

and also the sale of such tracts as were acquired, 
the proceeds to go to liquidating the bonds. 
Rome at once assented in writing to the propo- 
sition that the sale of such lands would allay 
public agitation against the friars, and an- 
nounced the appointment of a new delegate, 
who proceeded to Manila with full powers. Gov- 
ernor Taft replied that he regretted the ap- 
pointment of the new delegate, and proposed 
instead that the disputed questions be sub- 
mitted to a tribunal of five, the odd member 
to be chosen by some high, disinterested party. 
Rome rejected this, and then Washington ac- 
cepted the proposal of the new delegate, who 
proved to be a man of great culture, Monsignor 
Guidi. In six months' time he was in Manila, 
and in thirteen months he and the representa- 
tives of the United States had come to a complete 
understanding, which was embodied in written 
contract and soon carried out, by which we 
acquired the four hundred thousand acres of 
Friar Lands for $7,227,000 gold. Some three 
hundred of the friars have continued in the 
Islands, and many of them remain upon their 
urban property in and about Manila, which was 
not acquired by us ; others have gone out into 
the country once more, where the intense feel- 
ing against them has abated sufficiently, a 
condition assisted by the dissemination of the 
knowledge that they were no longer of any 



io8 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

more force in governmental matters than the 
poorest native. 

Thus ended our troubles with the friars, but 
thus began our annoyances with the Friar Lands, 
with which our newspapers have been agitated 
from time to time, ever since. 

The total bonded indebtedness of the Philip- 
pine Government of to-day is ^16,125,000. 
Of this, seven million dollars is for these Friar 
Lands. Could they be handled in a business- 
like fashion, it is very likely that they would 
meet the bonds. In fact they might have done 
so already. But it has been impossible to 
handle them in that manner. They are in 
demand for sugar lands, taken as a whole, but 
owing to politics, laws have been passed pre- 
venting any corporation from acquiring more 
than twenty-five hundred acres, and any in- 
dividual over forty acres of public lands. When 
the Insular Government sought 4:o market the 
Friar Lands, it found itself attacked by those 
who maintained that these properties were sub- 
ject to the laws governing public lands ; in other 
words, that not more than twenty-five hundred 
acres could be sold to a corporation or more 
than forty to an individual. 

Now, no first-class sugar mill of economical 
dimensions can be maintained upon less than 
about ten thousand acres of cane, and while 
large sugar people would probably have taken 



THE FRIAR LANDS 109 

up all lands that were suitable and come close 
to liquidating their cost to the government, 
agitation in the United States has not only 
prevented such an introduction of new capital 
into the Islands, but has continued the debt 
and prevented sales of any magnitude at all, for 
Congress has failed to act in a decisive way that 
would end the talk about the illegality of any 
sales that might be made. A committee of 
Congress investigated the subject, differed 
over it, and as a necessary precaution the 
Secretary of War refrained from making any 
large sales. If the situation be not relieved, 
these lands will constitute a heavy drain upon 
the Insular Government. 

The agitation which has been conducted by 
our countrymen, who believe that it is better 
for the natives to be saddled with this debt of 
seven million dollars than it is to pay it by 
selling the lands to the highest bidders, is upon 
the basis that thus the lands will be saved from 
the sugar trust and from exploitation, whatever 
that may mean. Such a contention is little 
less than silly in view of the facts. While the 
agitation has been going on for several years, 
with the effect of discouraging sales and pros- 
pective investors, the lands have been de- 
teriorating, in large measure. Cogon grass has 
possessed thousands of acres, which depreciates 
the property notably ; and sugar lands all over 



no THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

the Islands have had a distinct tendency to 
reach a lower price. The view of the agitators 
is that if they can prevent the sale of these 
lands to the large investor, they will have 
achieved a great victory for the native, although 
the lands affected are but three tenths per cent 
of fully fifty million acres of totally unoccupied, 
unclaimed, cultivable public lands possessed by 
the Insular Government. 

The position is simply this to-day : There 
are one hundred and seventy-one thousand 
acres of the Friar Lands entirely unoccupied. 
There are no small tenants or small purchasers 
to whom any considerable part of this enormous 
tract can be leased or sold. The original cost 
of it and the interest thereon can only be ob- 
tained from its sale, unless money be appro- 
priated directly out of the treasury of the 
Islands when the bonds become due. The 
House Committee on Insular Affairs examined 
the law and decided that these lands could be 
sold in large tracts ; but public agitation con- 
tinued, and the Secretary of War dared not 
authorize the sales in large acreage until further 
confirmatory act by Congress. In the mean- 
time, the interest on the bonds must be ad- 
vanced from Insular funds, the land deterio- 
rates, possible customers with the necessary 
capital have gone elsewhere, and no party 
except a corporation can purchase more than 



THE FRIAR LANDS iii 

forty acres of these lands ; and as a corporation 
may not secure enough for its needs, and no 
individual or corporation has appeared as a 
purchaser or a tenant for any plot of forty 
acres or less, none can be sold or leased to any- 
body, especially not to those for whom we are 
said, with a great flourish, to be holding these 
lands in trust. And in the meantime these 
supposed cestuis-que-trust are being taxed for 
the carrying charges that the Manila govern- 
ment must pay for these lands that these very 
cestuis do not want.^ 

If they were applying for them, if they would 
show the least inclination to want them on 
any basis, that would be one thing. But to 
hold them for people who won't do that much, 
and charge these same people with the expense 
of holding them, is the height of folly — and 
worse. If the United States yield to the agita- 
tion that has sprung up in America and pass 
a law that the Friar Lands can be sold only 
in the limited amounts described, thus render- 
ing their sale impossible, then, to be fair to these, 
our wards, for whom we say we are acting as 
trustees. Congress should reimburse the Philip- 
pines for what money the natives have to be 
taxed to pay for the expenses of carrying these 



* For a general statement of this situation, vide 191 1 Report 
Philippine Commission, p. 96. 



112 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

lands that we have prevented them from sell- 
ing. 

A trustee ought not to be permitted to waste 
the estate of the ward, merely because the 
former has inflicted a deliberate loss upon 
him. 



CHAPTER V 

THE FIFTH LABOR OF HERCULES 

The toll of death under Spain — The cholera epi- 
demic of 1 902-1 903 — General anaemia due to 
parasites reaching system through infected water 
— How Manila has been made a sanitary city — 
Six hundred artesian wells the most potent con- 
trol of contagious diseases — We enforce sani- 
tary regulations — Universal vaccination com- 
pelled — We establish a leper colony — Free 
medicines and surgery — The rinderpest — High 
infant mortality in Manila — Schools for nurses — 
Sanitation taught in all public schools. 

The cleaning of the Augean stables was a 
slight undertaking in comparison with purify- 
ing the Philippines, as may be well compre- 
hended from what we have already said about 
the execrable conditions in the metropolis of the 
Islands. The cholera and smallpox swept off 
the natives in Manila by thousands, and the 
further one went into the country the worse the 
conditions became. The details of daily life 
pertaining to the preservation of good health 
and decency, as observed among civilized people, 
were, except in rarest instances, entirely lack- 

"3 



114 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

ing from one end of the Islands to the other. 
No imagination can make the Filipino customs 
with respect to these matters worse than the 
actuality. 

Our army officers finally succeeded in pro- 
tecting our men to such a degree that they 
were no more in danger than they would have 
been had they never crossed the Pacific. But 
when they tried to make the Filipino adopt 
sanitation as a principle of his life, the task 
became simply appalling. The only things 
that occur to me that the natives ever did that 
were sanitary were frequent bathing and the 
donning of clean white clothes, for which there 
is a common liking. 

In Manila there had never been any at- 
tempt at sanitation so far as can be discovered, 
through any regulations. No wonder that 
about three fifths of all the children in Manila 
under one year of age were meeting death 
annually, at the time our civil government 
went into control ! 

In 1 902-1 903 the cholera took off more than 
one hundred thousand of one hundred sixty-five 
thousand inhabitants attacked. In Manila, 
eighty-two per cent of native cases perished, 
and about fifty per cent of Americans thus 
afflicted did not recover. 

That awakened the medical officials as noth- 
ing else could have done, and sanitation be- 



THE FIFTH LABOR OF HERCULES 115 

came the first object of government. It was 
early determined that the anaemic condition 
of the great bulk of the natives was largely due 
to the ravages of several intestinal parasites 
which sapped the vitality, drew out the best 
blood, and prepared the victim for almost every 
disease. It was next found that these parasites 
reached the system through infected water, 
which the natives drank as freely as the purer 
variety, if the former could be more easily 
procured. 

In Manila, this part of the problem was at- 
tacked by installing a reliable water system, 
by building public sewers, and by rigid rules 
respecting the disposition of all refuse and the 
care of foods at all times. Then the thirty 
miles of canals within the city limits, choked 
with the pollution of a century, were dredged 
out, every stagnant pool was drained, the moat 
that ran about the ancient wall was filled in and 
made a park, and each native house was visited 
by careful inspectors, who saw that their regu- 
lations were observed. Hundreds of shacks 
were burned. No mercy was shown to the 
delinquent; and to-dayManila, except in the m.at- 
ter of infant mortality, is about as healthy a city 
as any of its size in the warmer part of America. 

The problem of drinking water throughout 
the Islands has been solved by the artesian well. 
More than any other one agency, this modern 



ii6 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

method of reaching good water has led to the 
control of contagious diseases. There are now 
six hundred of these wells, and their advent 
has almost invariably led to a marked de- 
crease in the prevailing death rate — in some 
instances a reduction of as much as fifty per 
cent. It is proposed to bore one of these wells 
in every town in the Islands where other good 
water cannot be procured. 

Under Spain there had been about forty 
thousand deaths per annum from smallpox. 
The death rate was at least fifty per one thou- 
sand for all diseases. There was practically no 
care for the insane, the common treatment 
being to hitch them with a chain to a stake. 
Of the some four thousand known lepers, all 
but two hundred of them wandered about 
wherever they pleased. A single grave was 
often employed a number of times, the latest 
occupant whose rent had not been met being 
thrown upon what the natives called a bone 
pile, in order to make room for the newcomer 
who had paid in advance. As there was no 
adequate quarantine in the Islands anywhere, 
the plague, cholera, and other tropical infectious 
diseases but little if any less in severity, were 
a constant menace. 

We organized some thirty boards of health 
in the more important centers, and, backed by 
the law, started to enforce garbage collection, 



THE FIFTH LABOR OF HERCULES 117 

sewage disposal, street sweeping, universal 
vaccination, the proper disposition of fecal 
matter, the proper exposal for sale of food- 
stuffs, etc. '■ — in short, practically all of the rules 
so familiar to Americans. 

The universal vaccination was a tremendous 
task and one that met with great opposition. 
If the local officials were not converts to the 
work, it failed; and so many instances arose 
in which this was the case that at last a plan 
was adopted that sent squads of vaccinators, 
about twenty-five in each group, into a certain -^ 
territory, there to remain until every native 
was vaccinated. Before this was done, records 
of the million people resident in and near 
Manila show that six thousand lost their lives 
annually from smallpox alone. After vaccina- 
tion was completed in this territory, there was 
not one death in the subsequent year. 

We built a modern hospital for the insane, 
and shall endeavor to add others until all of 
these unfortunates are assured of a good home. 
We took the lepers, as rapidly as we could 
collect them, to a separate island, Culion, 
there to test one of the most extensive segre- 
gation experiments yet conducted. There are 
now but very few lepers elsewhere in the Archi- 
pelago, and the study of the results of this 
treatment has made it evident that every leper 
must be sent to the colony. 



\ 



ii8 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

In localities where the lepers were permitted 
to remain, some three hundred new cases were 
reported. Since all discovered cases were re- 
moved, but fifty new patients have appeared. 
In all the Islands, where some seven hundred 
and fifty new cases arose with each new year, 
the number in 191 2 was three hundred. One of 
the relieving incidents of our treatment of these 
unfortunates is the discovery that the X-ray is 
an apparent cure, as well as the chaulmoogra oil. 
It is too early to feel positive as to the complete 
eradication, but it is settled to the point that all 
outward manifestations of the disease disappear 
when treated by either of these means. 

The bone piles have been forbidden by law. 
Quinine is distributed free of any charge, a 
step that has a marked effect upon the preva- 
lence of malaria. In prison sanitation very 
great advances have been made. The convict, 
under Spain, was frightfully treated when ill. 
In Manila, he was hustled into an old, unsani- 
tary wooden building, crowded to suffocation, 
and the man who came away alive was an ob- 
ject of great surprise. To-day no plague exists 
in the Islands, despite the fact that they are 
surrounded by it. Free dispensaries, free medi- 
cal service, free obstetrical aid for the poor, are 
to be had for the asking. Free surgical clinics 
for all applicants are in Manila. Packages of 
simple remedies for the most prevalent diseases 



THE FIFTH LABOR OF HERCULES 119 

have gone to almost every municipality that 
had no other medical sources. Medicines are 
furnished without cost to anybody in the by- 
way places who can distribute them with dis- 
cretion to the needy. A systematic attempt 
has been made to discover the whereabouts of 
unfortunates who are suffering from chronic 
surgical ailments which are probably curable, 
such as constructive blindness, clubbed hands 
and feet, tumors and the like, with the object 
of giving them relief at the free clinics in Manila. 
The government brings these people to Manila 
and returns them to their homes, all free of 
expense wherever such assistance be needed. 
The death rate has been reduced, it is believed, 
fully twenty — from fifty to thirty in the thou- 
sand. So far as statistics can be obtained, they 
make that showing, and it is probably even 
better than that. i 

Especial attention is being paid to consump- 
tion, which has attacked the natives so griev- 
ously that one in every eighteen appears to be 
affected by it, and some forty thousand die of 
it each year, so that this is one of the large 
problems. To those who are unfamiliar with 
life in tropical countries, this probably seems 
strange, for warm weather in the temperate 
zone spells health and strength. In the tropical 
countries the heat is, however, more deleteri- 
ous because of its duration, which eventually 



120 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

slows down the system and enervates It to 
such a degree that its resisting power to dis- 
ease or parasite is largely nullified. Even the 
little difference between the heat of the day 
and that of night is almost certain to cre- 
ate a cold in the case of most of the natives. 
From this it is but a step to consumption, 
which receives no intelligent treatment; that 
means infection until it is almost an epidemic. 
To treat it, we are establishing out-of-door 
camps in large numbers. 

The carabao is the salvation of the Filipino 
in the country districts, for it is out of the 
question for him to market his little crops with- 
out this animal, the sole means of transportation. 
Considered solely as a practical matter, the 
cultivation of rice, the staple food of the natives, 
is absolutely dependent upon this water buffalo, 
the fact being that the Filipino will not, as a 
rule, plant any rice at all unless he can plow 
his little paddy with a carabao. He will starve 
before he will adopt hand cultivation, which has 
become so general in other tropical countries. 
For a concrete instance supporting this as- 
sertion, we have only to refer to the effects 
of the great rinderpest epidemic of 1900, when 
the Islands were almost denuded of carabao. 
Instead of turning to rice planting by hand, 
the natives preferred to go without food to a 
degree entirely unnecessary. 



THE FIFTH LABOR OF HERCULES 121 

A serum was developed that promised to aid 
the eradication of this most infectious disease, 
but it failed, and effective quarantine is now 
relied upon with entire success. 

Of Manila, the present Governor-general 
says, in his 191 1 report: 

"The health of the city has been remarkably 
good, and were it not for the great infant mor- 
tality, the death rate would compare favorably 
with any American or European city. There 
have been a few cases of cholera and almost no 
smallpox. Two new sanitary barrios have 
been established and are proving effective in 
relieving unsanitary, congested districts. . . . 

"And yet the death rate among the Filipinos 
in Manila is frightful. It is 47.65 to the thou- 
sand, while it is but 16 for the Chinese there, 
12 for the Spaniards, 13 for the Americans, and 
14 for other natives of the East. This truly 
terrible rate among the Filipinos is owing to the 
mortality of all children, more than 64 per cent 
of all deaths being those of children less than 
five years old and 48.8 per cent being infants 
of one year or less." 

In studying the calamity it has been learned, 
first, that the death certificates issued were 
probably wrong in the majority of instances. 
Most of the infantile deaths were ascribed to 
meningitis and to infantile cholera, particularly 
the latter, about thirty-five per cent of the 
total number. As soon as necropsies by thor- 
oughly competent persons were begun, however, 



122 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

it became evident that the large majority of 
these deaths were caused by a disease akin to 
beriberi, if indeed it were not that. Every 
effort is being made to produce an adequate 
remedy, but as yet it has not been found. 

There is a suitable school for male nurses, 
another for the training of females ; there is 
ample field for interne work in the great hos- 
pital at Manila, which is the equal of any in 
its equipment. Concrete hospitals are going 
up, or have been completed at other points, 
like Cebu and Culion, while there is a brick 
one at Bontoc ; a sanitorium is building at 
another point, and soon there will be hospital 
conveniences within reasonable distance of 
every center of population. 

In all the schools sanitation is inculcated, 
and gradually its efficacies to some degree are 
reaching into nearly every hut. Of course its 
progress is slow, but still it is always there. 
In time of threatened epidemic, strict quaran- 
tine is enforced, and personal visits made two 
or more times every day to each hut in the 
suspected district. It has been years now since 
we have been assailed by the cry of the natives 
that we were bringing on the disease with the 
strange disinfectants that we compelled them 
to employ. They have, at least, ceased to 
believe that much, and that exhibits consider- 
able progress. 



CHAPTER VI 

GOOD ROADS 

No reliable roads in the Islands when we took 
them — Why all construction must be permanent 
and maintained at a high degree of repair — First 
appropriation made by civil government in the 
Islands was one million dollars for good roads — 
Why this sum and two million dollars more was 
wasted — W. Cameron Forbes comes as Secre- 
tary of Commerce and Police — The only big 
business man ever in the Insular Government — 
He champions good roads with great vigor and 
intelligence — How he at last obtained success 
— Permanent roads in all directions and ade- 
quate system of maintenance. 

Under Spain, there does not appear to have 
been, outside of the walls of Manila, even so 
much as a mile of permanent roadbed in all 
the Philippine Islands. An examination of the 
war maps of our predecessors, brought up to the 
time of the revolution in 1896, discloses what 
purported to be three, and only three, highways 
of any extent in Luzon, with byways leading 
from them. One was supposed to run to the 
north from Manila for three hundred and fifty 
miles, one to the northeast for about an equal 

123 



124 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

distance, while the third ran to the south for 
some three hundred miles. 

It would appear that none of these were 
capable of continuous service even between any 
two towns along their extent. If they ever 
were capable of more employment, there was 
nothing to indicate it, when we took possession. 
At any rate, the Spaniards seem to have ceased 
expending any money upon them as early as 
1895, when the coming rebellion was immi- 
nent; and other matters kept us so occupied 
that it was some six or seven years later be- 
fore we could enter upon any comprehensive 
improvements in their condition. In this pe- 
riod, the highways, such as they were, went 
almost entirely to ruin. What has been said 
applies with equal force to the rest of the 
Archipelago. 

The great agencies that brought about this 
wholesale ruin were two : first, the roads were 
never permanently surfaced ; and second, there 
is an annual rainfall of some seventy-five inches 
in the Philippines, fully two thirds of which 
falls in July, August, September, and October. 
It is a common occurrence for a piece of appar- 
ently good road to be transformed into an im- 
passable bog by several hours of one of these 
rains, which we call cloudbursts in the western 
part of the United States. The resulting ruin 
absolutely cuts off all wheel traffic during these 



GOOD ROADS 125 

months of the Tamy season. It was this and 
this alone that made it possible for Aguinaldo 
to keep up his resistance for so long a period. 
The trouble was to reach him, for in nearly 
six months of the year troops could not be 
moved. To meet this situation, we made 
extensive repairs, using our soldiers before the 
civil power came into control; but with the 
first rain our work was undone, and it was 
abandoned in despair. Few of the wooden or 
stone bridges and culverts that the Spaniards 
left to us were of any real value; and, as al- 
ready said, when we had restored peace in the 
land, it was a country without roads. 

And it never had been anything else, con- 
sidered as a whole. The trunk lines that 
were on the maps, running like the spokes of a 
wheel from Manila as the hub, with scores of 
branches, had left some traces, but little more, 
in many instances. As late as 1904, three 
years after our civil government began, there 
were months in the year when it proved im- 
possible to get a carriage through to Cavite 
from Manila, some fifteen miles distant, and 
these, for many reasons, the two points in the 
Archipelago most important to us. 

The eifect of this complete isolation was very 
momentous upon the people at large. All 
students now seem agreed that there is no 
place on earth to-day that would not be civilized 



126 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

shortly if it were opened up to the outside world 
by good, permanent roads, and then left to 
shift for itself. That alone would solve the 
great problem of the Feud Country in the 
LTnited States, of which mention has already 
been made. General Howard and I made a per- 
sonal study of these regions during a number 
of summers, when we rode through them on 
mule or horseback. There one may see a people 
in the making in a land without roads. The 
consequence is that scores of thousands of 
people of the best Anglo-Saxon stock are living 
with the restricted and primitive ideas and 
conveniences of their ancestors of more than a 
century ago. The observer is made aware that 
only a highroad into them is necessary for their 
enlightenment, for he may see how they pro- 
gress where this means of communication has 
been installed. Usually the transformation 
extends to some five miles from the end of the 
new road, and then the visitor is once more in 
the life of the earliest settlers. 

From an economical point of view, the effect 
of similar isolation in the Philippines is very 
marked. No matter how rich the land of the 
native may be, it is of no value to him or to 
anybody else if its products cannot be sent to 
a market. 

The effect must inevitablv be that the oc- 
cupant will give up all hope of raising to sell, 



GOOD ROADS 127 

and raise only for home consumption. In- 
stead of producing the crops that he could 
raise the most economically, selling them, and 
investing the proceeds in things which would 
improve his situation, he contents himself, 
because there is no object in doing better, with 
an inferior and smaller quantity of product. 
His family will weave poorer clothes, his house 
will be more crude, and he will settle down to 
the easiest way of making a bare living. 

But the moment a permanent road runs by 
that native's shack, a revolution begins among 
its inmates. There is then a reliable promise 
that he can get rice to the market-place in the 
next town every day in the year. It means 
that he can buy at a neighboring store those 
objects which he has always wanted for his 
family. The better the road, the more money 
he can make, for his one carabao can haul 
five times as much over a smooth road as over 
one that sends his wheels to the hubs in the 
mud. He can now ride over rivers on stout 
bridges instead of wading them and climbing 
steep banks on the other side. Every farmer 
within reach of the new road feels the oppor- 
tunity, and it is but a little time before the 
collective improvement demands a railroad, 
which in turn — because highway traffic is 
increased, — requires better roads still. 

Also, there is law and order to be considered. 



128 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

Lawlessness thrives only in darkness and 
obscurity. It cannot stand the public gaze; 
it cannot withstand the light. It is for simi- 
lar reasons that gentlemen-of-the-road, or la- 
drones, as the natives term them, had such full 
play in the Islands for centuries. They oper- 
ated in perfect security clear up to the walls 
of Manila, with its quarter of a million people. 
As late as 1904 I was chasing them within 
twenty miles of that city. With a little band 
of twenty they would descend in the darkness 
of the night upon the house of a wealthy man 
in a town not more than ten miles from Manila, 
seize him, and carry him into the forest. When 
the leader had been paid a thousand dollars 
by the distracted family of the captive, he would 
be released. Fifty thousand Americans might 
be not more than half a day's march away — 
and a regiment a mile distant; but the roads 
were impassable with the rains for the first 
part of the way, and there were none at all into 
that part of the forest where, of course, the 
marauders always disappeared. 

Napoleon and Csesar left their most im- 
perishable monuments in roads. Those colossal 
men knew their value. They are the greatest 
and surest civilizing agency in the making of 
man. 

That is why the very first appropriation ever 
voted by the Philippine Commission was a 



GOOD ROADS 129 

million dollars gold for highways and bridges. 
This was in September, 1900. 

Then we made a blunder, a very natural 
one, probably. As we had ordinarily in the 
past intrusted the building and maintenance of 
highroads in the United States exclusively to 
the town and county officials concerned, we 
saw no reason why the same plan would not 
work as well in the Islands among the municipal 
and provincial officials there. We adopted it, 
the roads were constructed, and when com- 
pleted, turned over in good condition to the 
native officials. Self-government was in the 
air. It was being lauded to the heavens by 
certain Americans who never saw the Philip- 
pines, and we were foolish enough to yield to 
their clamor, with the result that not only was 
that one million dollars lost, but more than two 
million in addition, before we awoke to the actu- 
alities of the situation and ceased theorizing. 
We gave provincial governors and municipal 
presidents full charge of these roads, and in two 
or three years after our three million dollars had 
been spent it was a total loss, for these officials 
took no care of the roads intrusted to their 
protection, and the rainy seasons did the rest. 
The surfacing was washed away, the stones of 
bridges were exposed, each passing wheel gave 
them a jolt, and it was little time before the 
entire structure fell and closed the road. 



I30 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

In 1904 the roads were poorer than when we 
first took charge; and worse than all, there 
appeared to be no hope of any improvement. 
We had spent money with the utmost freedom, 
and we had made a complete failure. We 
believed it was useless to expend any more, and 
the Islands seemed destined to remain in the 
same economical slough in which we had found 
them. With affairs in this deplorable condi- 
tion, there came to Manila, in August, 1904, a 
new Secretary of Commerce and Police, W. 
Cameron Forbes from Boston, a young man of 
about thirty-four, who had achieved great 
success in large financial operations. He was 
chosen as the best man who would go from the 
United States to develop the material and 
commercial interests of the Philippines. He 
had charge of navigation, harbors, coast survey, 
railroads, all public works, the highways, ir- 
rigation, postal service, and corporations. He 
was a trained organizer of large business enter- 
prises, of their auditing, of their expenditures, 
and their entire financial scheme, from deter- 
mining the amount of their bonds and stocks 
to their marketing. He spent years in the ex- 
amination of large transportation properties 
that it was proposed should be purchased or 
financed by his employers. He was in the very 
midst of big business in the electric railroad 
development of this country, with a Harvard 



GOOD ROADS 131 

general education to assist, and beneath it the 
qualities of great simplicity, modesty, and 
sincerity inherited from a long line of Forbes — 
who for a century had held a high place in 
business, philanthropy, and the affairs of the 
nation — and from his mother, who was the 
worthy daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
He was the first big business man we had ever 
sent out there. He threw himself with great 
and able vigor into the gap. He saw that 
three things were necessary : 

(i) Provision for raising and appropriating 
sufficient money for the maintenance of all 
good roads and the construction of needed new 
roads. 

(2) A system of road construction of per- 
manent and durable type, of such nature that 
it would remain serviceable for the longest 
time for the least money ; and 

(3) A system of maintenance that would 
keep in good condition all roads and bridges 
already constructed. 

Success or failure of Mr. Forbes's campaign 
in this matter depended entirely upon his 
ability to get the various native officials in the 
provinces to aid him, for they controlled the 
situation. Under the laws they could not be 
compelled to do anything. If they would do 
nothing, no better results could be had in the 
future than in the past. Since our occupation 



132 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

their attitude had always been that they were 
glad to have new roads, but not a dollar of the 
funds in their charge would be devoted to the 
necessary upkeep. 

It was a situation that demanded action and 
not theory — it was a practical question ; and 
Forbes went about it like the practical man that 
he is. 

His first step was taken when he got the Philip- 
pine Commission to pass an act authorizing the 
provinces and the municipalities to compel five 
days' labor of every able-bodied man on the 
roads, or pay in default of such labor the com- 
muted value thereof as fixed by the provincial 
council. This law was to be in effect when ac- 
cepted by the convention of municipal presi- 
dents and councilors. 

Not a single province accepted it, and that 
effort proved abortive. 

Another law was passed, but against Forbes's 
opposition, which authorized provinces to fix 
a toll on roads and bridges, the proceeds to 
be employed upon maintaining these in proper 
repair. 

The result was no better. The natives 
showed that they had at least one thing in 
common with the peoples of all the rest of the 
world when they rebelled against raising in- 
ternal revenue by impeding transportation. 

Then the third proposition was made, a law 



GOOD ROADS 133 

authorizing the provincial boards to double 
the cedula, or annual poll tax, from half a 
dollar to a dollar, the excess to be used wholly 
for roads and bridges. 

This accomplished no more than the others ; 
and next the persistent young Yankee passed 
two further acts, which provided that ten per 
cent of the internal revenue of the Islands 
should be divided in proportion to population 
among such of the provinces as would vote to 
double their poll tax, such excess to go to road 
work. If any province did not double this 
poll tax, its share of the ten per cent of the 
internal revenues would be divided among the 
provinces which had doubled it. The laws 
further provided : 

(i) That in order to get any share of this 
ten per cent of the internal revenue, a province 
must introduce what is known as the "caminero 
system," by which such province would under- 
take to spend ^175 annually on each kilometer 
of its roads, and, in addition, keep one com- 
petent road laborer with proper tools continu- 
ally employed upon each two kilometers of 
the road in the dry season and upon half of 
that distance in the wet time of the year ; and 

(2) That the central government would spend 
money upon roads only in provinces which 
adopted the foregoing measures. 

To show the provincial officials what this 



134 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

meant in money, Forbes had the central govern- 
ment appropriate some eight hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars to go into road work in such 
amenable provinces only; and this sum, to- 
gether with the ten per cent of the internal 
revenue, furnished the unprecedented sum of 
^2,112,000 that was available for road work in 
only such provinces as voted these measures, i] 

Here, at last, was something that looked 
attractive to the provincial native officials, and 
they promptly fell into line, accepted the laws, 
doubled their poll tax, and established the 
caminero system. Whereupon Forbes notified 
them that he proposed to charge against each 
ofiicer whose duty it was to see that a road was i 

maintained, the cost of replacing each section 
of such road ; and every three months the grad- 
ing, surfacing, and every ditch, bridge, and 
culvert in that section of the road charged to 
that official would be checked up by an in- 
spector, and if there had been undue deprecia- 
tion the delinquent ofiicer was to be removed ! 

At that time there were but 350 miles of sur- 
faced road in all the Islands. 

The very first year under these new measures 
this total was increased by a third, the second 
year by a half, and as much more in the year 
after that, all in accord with a general road 
system laid out for each province with the nec- 
essary connecting links. Bridges and culverts 



GOOD ROADS 135 

of steel and concrete were made the rule, and 
no temporary structure was erected without 
permission of Forbes himself. 

The stimulus which the construction of these 
roads gave to agriculture can hardly be over- 
estimated. New dwellings rapidly arose beside 
the modern road ; vacant land near by became 
occupied and tilled ; blacksmith shops found 
new business in constructing broad-tired wheels, 
and the increased wheel traffic was astonishing. 

When Forbes became Governor-general in 
1909, a year after these results just described, 
progress on these lines moved more rapidly. 
The Filipinos were not long in taking advantage 
of the new combination of governor-general 
and pioneer road builder; and where, but little 
before, Mr. Forbes had to hold tight to the coat- 
tails of the provincial officials to get them to 
listen to him on his favorite subject, he now had 
great difficulty in escaping with his own, for 
from all over the Islands came demands for 
road improvement. The real construction of a 
metal road with concrete culverts and steel 
bridges was something that any Filipino could 
see, and it soon instilled in him an enthusiasm 
that was unwonted. He learned that such a 
road meant more money for everybody living 
alongside it; and there is now no necessity of 
the drastic requirements that Mr. Forbes had 
to pass to get the native officials to pay the 



136 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

slightest heed to the only means of communi- 
cation the people have. 

In yielding to many of these local demands, 
however, the general plan was lost sight of 
necessarily, and scattered sections of good 
roads were built in all directions ; but within 
the last year much progress has been made 
in linking these together. There were three mil- 
lion dollars available for roads in 191 2. With- 
in the coming several years, great strides are- 
promised in this direction; and within five 
years, continuous systems will be completed 
in the majority of the provinces, and nearly all 
the large towns will be in touch with each other 
with hard, smooth roads, with groomed grass 
slopes, clean ditches, and a right of way prop- 
erly maintained. On January i, 1913, there 
were almost eleven hundred miles of the heavy- 
surfaced and four hundred of the light-surfaced 
roads. 

The two main road projects now being worked 
out are : 

(i) The Manila-North road, which is to run 
from Manila to Bangui, the extreme northern 
point of Luzon, a distance of 350 miles. 

(2) The Manila-South road, which will ex- 
tend from the capital city to Sorsogon, situated 
on the extreme southern end of the island. 
This will be more than three hundred miles 
long, and when it is done, there will be a first- 




Benguet Road. Lower Section of Zig-zag 
FROM Camp Boyd. 



GOOD ROADS 137 

class, permanent, smooth road from one end 
of the island to the other, 650 miles in extent. 
Progress is made daily, and before the close of 
191 3, that portion to the north will go as far as 
Pangasinan, so that one can then travel by 
automobile in the dry season to Sibul Springs 
and to Baguio, the summer capital, a distance of 
some 150 miles. This will afford a market for 
a great section of rice fields now languishing 
from the lack of it. By 1914 that much road 
will be heavy enough to be in permanent use, 
and in 1917 the entire north road to Bangui 
should be of that character, too. 

By March, 191 2, the Manila-South road was 
opened all the way from Manila to the Pacific 
Ocean, at or near Gumaca (a little beyond 
Atimonan), a distance of 120 miles. This is 
capable of continuous use. A through road 
from Nueva Caceres to Legaspi, in Albay (in 
extreme south), a stretch of some sixty miles, 
will very shortly be opened for permanent 
traffic. 

Intense rivalry has been aroused between the 
various provinces to see which shall show the 
best road condition at the end of each fiscal year. 
To encourage this emulation further, the cen- 
tral government has off'ered three prizes : one 
of seventy-five hundred dollars to the province 
maintaining the best stretch of first-class road 
in the best style; one of fivQ thousand dollars 



138 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

to the province constructing the greatest mile- 
age of first-class quality within a year; and a 
third of twenty-five hundred dollars to the 
province transferring the greatest per cent of 
its funds to the road and bridge fund. 



CHAPTER VII 

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS 

The insignificant telegraph and cable system under 
Spain destroyed before restoration of peace — 
We install a modern system of electrical communi- 
cation between all the important islands and 
centers — We increase the railroad mileage from 
120 to more than 500 — Ten millions in gold ex- 
pended in the important harbors — Manila only 
port in Orient beside whose piers a ship drawing 
thirty feet may lie — Coast and geodetic work — 
Market provided for out-of-the-way places by 
government vessels — A postal service of the 
first class throughout all the Archipelago. 

Private capital was induced by Spain to 
introduce the telegraph into Luzon in 1873, 
and to a less extent into the islands of Cebu, 
Panay, and Negros, where there were important 
seaports ; but by the time we had restored 
peace in these lands there was not enough left 
of the system to describe. What Spain could 
not hold, she destroyed, and the natives did 
the same, and when later we drove Aguinaldo's 
forces farther and farther away from Manila, 
he pursued the same tactics ; until all we could 

139 



140 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

find of a telegraph system was composed of 
about four hundred miles of useless wires in the 
extreme northern parts of Luzon and along the 
west coast. 

We took hold of this situation with a strong 
hand, through the efficient signal corps of our 
army, and as rapidly as we restored peace we 
installed lines in island after island. In the 
course of the last year of the struggle with 
Aguinaldo we stretched 2770 miles of wire in 
Luzon and 909 miles more in the Visayan 
islands of Panay, Negros, Cebu, Leyte, and 
Samar. 

Then arose the question of inter-island com- 
munication. When we reached the Islands, 
there were cables from Luzon to Panay, from 
there to Negros, and then on to Cebu, but these 
had been so interrupted by the insurgents as 
to be useless. General McArthur cabled to 
Washington urging authority to install a com- 
prehensive cable system which would reach 
every important point in the entire Archipelago. 
He demonstrated that if it had not been for 
the telegraph wires he had strung, he would 
have required one hundred and fifty thousand 
men instead of the sixty thousand with which 
he was holding the Islands. This appealed to 
Washington. It saved money; and General 
Greely, Chief Signal Officer, was given all the 
authority that the situation demanded. He 



OTHER IMPROVEMENTS 141 

ordered and dispatched at the first possible 
moment so much cable that by October, 1901, 
there was a thoroughly modern system of it 
between the metropolis of the Archipelago and 
the islands of Basilan, Boac, Bohol, Corregidor, 
Cebu, Jolo, Leyte, Masbate, Mindanao, Min- 
doro, Negros, Panay, Samar, and Siassi, effect- 
ing, with the assistance of the telephone and 
the telegraph lines already completed, elec- 
trical communication for 1684 miles from north 
to south, from Bangui, in northern Luzon, 
within three hundred miles of Formosa, to 
Siassi, but one hundred miles from Borneo. 
This system was unequaled in any particular 
in the annals of war operations. It reached 
every important island in the Archipelago 
except Paragua. 

Telephones were put in with the same rapid- 
ity, beginning in Manila, until in December, 
1902, when the chain of wires began to be turned 
over by the army to the new civil government, 
the signal corps was operating wires aggregat- 
ing 10,232 miles, of which 336 were telephone 
lines, 1528 submarine cables, and 8368 land 
telegraph lines. The cost of this enormous 
contribution to the modernizing of the Filipino 
was two and a half million dollars gold. 

This entire network of wires was thrown 
open to commercial use within three months 
after the capture of Aguinaldo (March, 1901). 



142 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

What It meant to commerce alone may be 
suggested by the statement that tests, care- 
fully and accurately conducted, showed that 
in due course no less than thirty days were 
consumed in sending a letter by the postal 
service as conducted by Spain, from Manila 
to various towns in Luzon, and securing a 
response thereto written immediately. To ef- 
fect the same operation between Manila and 
the important points in the other islands two 
or three months was often needed. The first 
six months after the opening to commercial 
operations, the wires transmitted some two 
hundred and twenty thousand messages. The 
rate for all points in Luzon was two cents per 
word. Under Spain the rate was ten cents. 

On the fourth of July, 1904, a new cable, the 
only one that has ever run from the Islands to 
America, was opened. 

Progress has not lagged under civil govern- 
ment. The hurried construction of the wartime 
work, where advisable, is being made perma- 
nent, and all flying lines, really useful only in 
the war days, have been abandoned. 
' Each year a substantial addition to the system 
is seen. In 1910 over a thousand miles of new 
telegraph wire were laid down. In 191 1 the 
addition was 255 miles and there were sunk 
125 miles of new submarine cables ; and in the 
ten years since the civil government took over 



OTHER IMPROVEMENTS 143 

the telephones, they have increased in wire three 
hundred miles annually, so that in 191 2 there 
were 8008 miles in the Islands, with 6430 miles 
of telegraph and 1986 of cables. Every impor- 
tant point in the Archipelago can now be reached 
by electrical communication by means of these 
11,426 miles of wires at rates that are fully as 
low as those we pay here in the United States. 

We installed the wireless as soon as it had 
proven its practicability, and powerful stations 
now exist at Manila, Cavite, Corregidor, Zam- 
boanga, Jolo, Malabang, and Davao; while 
extensive plans are already projected for wider 
distribution of this newest means of communi- 
cation. 

When we went to the Islands, there was only 
the narrow-gauge railroad from Manila to Da- 
gupan, 120 miles to the north. This has been 
modernized, from ties to engines, in every 
particular. In 191 1 fifteen miles of new track 
took it up to Aringay, and in 191 2 another 
fifteen miles carried commercial traffic still 
further to the north, to San Fernando. 

Upon the south, a line is now in operation 
around Manila Bay to Cavite and on to Naic, 
on the western coast, a total distance of some 
twenty-five miles, thus establishing permanent 
service between points that were formerly en- 
tirely disconnected for weeks at a time, except 
by water, during the rainy season. 



144 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

Manila is now connected with Batangas, the 
important city on the southern coast of Luzon, 
by a line some forty miles long, with a branch 
of thirty miles running from Calamba, on 
Laguna de Bay, to Pagsanjan; the main line 
that will connect Manila and Legaspi was due at 
Lucena, January i, 191 3 ; and construction is 
proceeding at various places farther toward the 
southern end of Luzon, which will be reached 
as soon as the rails can be laid. 

In Panay, one of the larger islands situated 
about 150 miles south of Luzon, a railroad is 
now in operation from Iloilo, the second port 
in importance in the Islands, on the southern 
coast, to Capiz, seventy-three miles away on the 
northern seashore. 

In Cebu, still farther to the south, there are 
some sixty miles in full operation. 

Summing it all up, at the end of 191 2 there 
were over five hundred miles of railroad, more 
than four times as many as when we took pos- 
session; and by 191 5, if present plans are ful- 
filled, there will be a round thousand miles 
of first-class railroad, adequately equipped to 
handle the bulk of the business of the most 
important points in the Islands, and tapping 
the great centers of all their natural resources. 

Almost all of this great showing of railroad 
expansion — for it is great under the circum- 
stances — may be ascribed to the fact that 



OTHER IMPROVEMENTS 145 

the Philippine Government guarantees an in- 
come of not exceeding four per cent on the cash 
capital actually invested in the construction 
and equipment of all railroads whose financing 
and other important particulars meet its ap- 
proval. 

The coast line of the Philippines is greater 
than that of the United States, excluding 
Alaska. More than one hundred streams of 
navigable size for light-draft craft run into the 
ocean from the large islands. More than 
nine tenths of the people of these lands live 
on the coast line or within sight of it, if their 
homes be elevated above the intervening trees. 
All the large towns are by the sea. As water- 
borne transportation is easily the cheapest in 
the world, it will be employed by the great 
bulk of Filipino commerce. 

Until we took hold, all this water-borne trans- 
portation was conducted upon the policy of 
monopoly or privilege. There were no fixed 
rates or schedules. In a word, the lines were 
not common carriers. They owed no obli- 
gation to anybody or anything, unless to some 
Spanish official whose word was law. All of 
this was a drag upon commerce, which our 
civil government very soon altered by offering 
subsidies and other inducements to steamers 
operating between the different islands, which 
would define, announce in advance, and follow 



146 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

definite routes, upon regular schedules, with 
fixed, just tariffs for man and merchandise. 
Regulations were enforced by careful inspection, 
resulting in complete revolution of the facili- 
ties for passenger carriage that under Spain 
was an abomination. Electric lights, distilling 
plants on every steamer, and modern plumbing 
were provided. Strict regulation of the pur- 
chase, handling, and serving of all foods was 
enforced. 

Next the big harbors were attacked. The 
enormous sum of ten million dollars has been 
expended in making them the best ports in the 
Orient. We dredged a harbor in front of Ma- 
nila until it was thirty feet deep and inclosed by 
two permanent breakwaters of a total length 
of more than two miles. Two enormous steel 
piers, one 650 feet in length with a width of 
110 feet and one six hundred feet long and 
seventy feet in width, both covered with per- 
manent steel sheds, were set beside this harbor 
so that ocean steamers drawing thirty feet can 
dock at them, an unheard-of thing in that part 
of the world. These piers are equipped with 
a full complement of railroad track, electric 
lights, and the most modern of traffic-handling 
devices. Enormous warehouses are projected 
to stand beside the piers ; and when they are 
ready for occupancy, the present expense of 
handling the cargoes, much less than when they 



OTHER IMPROVEMENTS 147 

all had to be lightered, will be reduced almost 
one half. Two other steel piers of much 
greater magnitude — 150 feet wide and 750 
to 800 long — will be added as soon as they 
can be completed. Then, too, all harbor dues, 
one of the worst features of foreign trade, have 
been absolutely abolished, making Manila the 
only free port in the entire Orient, without a 
charge for tonnage, harbor, or light dues. 

Dredges were put at work upon that section 
of the Pasig River that flows through Manila, 
and along whose banks are the wharves of the 
city, and they have been kept there ever since, 
maintaining at all times by their operation a 
clear depth of eighteen feet at least, thus ad- 
mitting many vessels that before could do 
nothing but lighter their loads. 

At Cebu, the second city of commercial im- 
portance in the Islands, on the eastern coast of 
the island of the same name, another revolution 
was instituted. There no vessel of size could 
approach a dock, everything having to be taken 
to and fro by lighters. That was all changed 
by constructing a concrete sea wall nearly half 
a mile long, which increased the berthing space 
of the port about one thousand per cent and 
permitted vessels drawing not over twenty- 
three feet to moor beside it and unload and 
load directly to and from it with modern freight- 
lifting appliances. 



148 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

At Iloilo, the third commercial town, on the 
southeastern coast of Panay, work of similar 
import was done. Modern wharves, sadly 
wanting, were installed, the channel was 
dredged and kept dredged, quays were widened ; 
and when the work now undertaken is com- 
pleted, two large ocean steamers can lie by the 
new wharves, discharge, and load direct. 

In all the three thousand islands, crowded 
together as they are, in typhoon territory, 
surrounded with threatening reefs, with treach- 
erous currents, there was just one light, but 
not even a singly buoy in operation at the be- 
ginning of our administration. When the civil 
government was instituted in 1901, we had in- 
creased the number of lights to twenty-seven, 
and there were thirty-one buoys in position. 
Now there are 142 lights — flashing, occult, elec- 
tric, and lantern lights, beacons to the number 
of fifty-two, and 108 buoys. There are sema- 
phore stations which tell all commercial Manila 
what vessels are entering its channels, the route, 
and the probable time of arrival at the wharves. 
Ninety-three per cent of the twenty-six hundred 
men employed in the bureau of navigation, 
which has charge of all these matters, are Fili- 
pinos. Some fifty craft move about, engaged 
constantly in the work of this department or 
in promoting new trade where other transpor- 
tation is not available. Many towns that have 



OTHER IMPROVEMENTS 149 

never been visited by vessels large enough to 
carry cargo are put on regular routes of coast- 
guard cutters that take their products to the 
nearest market; and every small planter in 
the vicinity knows that at last he can secure 
sale of his goods if he gets them to the coast. 
This opens a new horizon to hundreds whose 
efforts have been stifled heretofore, and al- 
though the rates charged do not repay directly 
the money outlay, yet the policy has never been 
altered. As a rule it is but a short time after 
the establishment of one of these governmental 
routes when some canny seaman deems it 
worthy of the installation of a commercial 
line. He takes up the traffic, and the govern- 
ment's cutter withdraws, only to search out 
some other place in similar want of its services ; 
and so the work goes on, all along the entire 
coast, ever expanding, ever offering its aid. 

And then there has been the coast and geo- 
detic survey, which has been pushed consist- 
ently and constantly, for this work lies even 
nearer to the foundation of all sea traflic than 
lighthouses and buoys. When we came to 
look for charts of the coast and waters of the 
Islands, it was astonishing to discover that 
there were none of any reliability. The con- 
tinuous consequent loss of so many tons of 
shipping and many lives had spurred Spain to no 
activity. We lost vessels because of this lack, 



I50 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

and no time was lost in remedying an intol- 
erable situation. We set to work to chart the 
11,500 miles of general coast line in the Islands, 
and now more than fifty-one per cent of the labor 
has been completed, chart after chart being 
printed at Washington as rapidly as the data 
arrives and, so urgent is the need, distributed to 
mariners section by section. 

The installation of a modern weather bureau 
service, with observations from various points, 
made possible by the telegraph and cable con- 
nection to all parts of the Archipelago, has been 
of immense benefit to shipping. Here we must 
pay tribute to the work that was done at the 
observatory established in Manila fifty years 
ago and presided over by learned monks. 
Father Faura early began the scientific study 
of the typhoon, the most terrible of all sea 
storms ; and with what he left to Father Algue, 
who followed under our administration, the 
nature of these disturbances is now well estab- 
lished. This means more than the ordinary 
layman would expect, for the typhoon is capa- 
ble of being known with remarkable accuracy. 
Its progress, its duration, the location of its 
center (the danger point), its intensity, can 
all be telegraphed to mariners in every center 
of shipping, and, with the wireless, even to those 
far out to sea, who may be unaware of the 
storm's existence. It is now the practice to 



OTHER IMPROVEMENTS 151 

send this information all along the Chinese 
coast and even to the large Japanese ports. 

The postal service under Spain was about 
as worthy of praise as the other facilities which 
she supplied for opening the country to the 
benefit of modern conditions. All mail for- 
warded from island to island was carried free 
of charge to the government by such commercial 
boats as plied between them — when they carried 
it. The presidents of towns were everywhere 
obliged to act as postmasters, and to distribute, 
collect, and forward at their own expense — at 
any rate, never at the expense of the government 
— all mails. There was never any steady ex- 
amination of the service, any supervision of it, 
and the results may well be imagined. There 
was no regularity, no integrity, no system to 
any feature, except its utter lack of reliability 
and safety, which failing was constant; and 
whatever there was useful was destroyed in toto 
by the depredations of the stormy years from 
1896 to 1901. In the first part of the latter 
year we were operating but twenty-four regular 
post-offices in all the Islands, and ten sub- 
stations at military posts. Letters went twice 
a week up to Baguio from Dagupan, the north- 
ern end of the railroad, in charge of native 
carriers. Aside from this, all the land service 
was done by army messengers. But we were 
building with the right foundation, for even 



1 52 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

in those days nobody could enter the mail 
department except through civil service. By 
the end of the first year under civil government, 
the number of post-offices had advanced from 
twenty-four at its commencement to sixty-six, 
and seventy more were installed before the 
annual report of the director of the service for 
that year was in print. 

From that time progress became rapid in 
extension and in efficiency. In a year the num- 
ber of post-offices had risen to 213. In another 
year it was 391, with 102 American and 289 
Filipino postmasters. The coast-guard steamers 
were then making regular calls with mail-bags 
among the various islands. In 1905 there were 
414 post-offices ; and so we have gone on up to 
the present, gradually extending, gradually im- 
proving in all particulars, as rapidly as has 
seemed feasible, until 572 offices now supply 
regular, reliable service to the some six hundred 
towns and cities in the Archipelago — 623 to be 
exact, reduced for economy in administration 
from 1035. 

The rates for letters are half what they are in 
the United States; the regulations the same 
in all important particulars, where applicable. 
Mails are as frequent as they are in similar 
communities with us, and the entire service is 
of a most excellent character in every particular. 
Nobody seems to find any fault with it. Of 



OTHER IMPROVEMENTS 153 

course the road has not always been direct. 
There have been many failures ; in fact, the 
ways have been paved by them. There have 
been embezzlements, routes kept open for a 
time and then abandoned because of disorders 
and unfortunate choice of officials. But we 
have gone ahead always, until at last the Fili- 
pinos have been given a mail service in the 
American sense of the term, including, in the 
thirty-five largest cities, a free delivery system. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE OMNIBUS CLAUSE 

Postal savings-banks — Their great popularity with 
the natives — Notable influence of the constabu- 
lary — The first census of the Philippines — We 
give the Islands a lower house of Congress — But 
three per cent of the Filipinos compose the elec- 
torate — Road and trail work among the savage 
peoples — How the Filipinization of the govern- 
mental service has progressed — Some things 
the Filipinos do not yet want to learn — Why 
natives cannot be more rapidly taken into their 
government. 

Postal savings-banks were in the Islands 
earlier than we had them in the United States. 
This was due to a condition that existed long 
before we had given it thought. If we except 
Manila and several other cities, there were no 
banks in the Islands. There was no safe way 
for a man to keep his money if he had any. 
He could send it to Manila, and take out a 
certificate of deposit, or he could invest it ; but 
there were drawbacks to either course. In the 
end most of the people just went to the post- 
office and secured a postal order drawn to the 

154 



THE OMNIBUS CLAUSE 155 

order of "Self," and when they wanted any 
money, they presented this blue piece of paper 
and procured it with no trouble. In 1906 the 
Commission established the postal savings- 
banks, paying two and one half per cent interest 
on all deposits. Two hundred and thirty-five 
such banks were opened the first year, with 
total deposits of three hundred and ninety-three 
thousand dollars gold, contributed by 1616 
Americans and 944 Filipinos, the latter com- 
prising thirty-five per cent of the total. Ten 
more of these banks came in the next year, 
when the deposits aggregated seven thousand 
in number and over half a million dollars gold 
in value. The native depositors had risen to 
forty-five per cent. And so the story goes, 
until 191 2 shows 414 postal banks, with de- 
posits rising to $1,423,000 gold, and with more 
than eighty per cent of the depositors Filipinos, 
numbering in the aggregate 23,174, as against 
4388 Americans. This result was largely ob- 
tained through the introduction, by Governor 
Forbes, at his own personal expense, of the ele- 
ment of emulation by offering a series of prizes 
to the pupils in the various schools throughout 
the Islands. These prizes, in cash and postal 
savings-bank stamps, were awarded to the 
pupils of each school who first opened an ac- 
count and deposited a peso [fifty cents gold] 
in the postal savings-bank; and while to us 



156 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

the prizes given, not over a peso in any single 
instance, appear small, the stimulus thus im- 
parted was felt at once, for the school children 
did not long remain the only ones to whom the 
benefit of the banks became known. In a year 
the percentage of Filipino depositors rose to 
forty-five; then, in 1909, to fifty-six; in 1910, to 
sixty-five; and as already stated, to eighty by 
1912. 

Then there has been established an Agri- 
cultural Bank, under the auspices of the gov- 
ernment of the Islands, thus following the 
policy of other colonial nations in providing a 
bank whose operation is confined by law to 
farm loans. The farmer with a crop to move 
may now borrow capital to effect that opera- 
tion at an ordinary commercial rate, instead of 
paying from twenty to one hundred per cent, 
as was the common occurrence before this 
institution was founded. 

Individual Americans are now to be found 
in some prosperous pursuit, usually with their 
families, in nearly all of the provinces. From 
them radiates a steady influence of example 
that gradually changes the ways of the natives 
in the immediate vicinity to those of this higher 
civilization. As a rule, these pioneers are young 
men, former governmental employees, often 
ex-soldiers, who first learned in Manila business 
experience the ways by which money may be 




The Old, 

Natives Threshing Rice with their Feet. Bulacan Province. 




The New. 

American Machiner}' Threshing Rice. 



i 



THE OMNIBUS CLAUSE 157 

made in the Islands. The rolling-stone Ameri- 
cans who followed our occupation in the hope 
of gaining some moss to which they were not 
entitled are no longer an element. 

In Manila, American daily papers to the num- 
ber of three now give the news of the world 
with the same promptness that it is published 
in Continental and American centers. There 
are about a score of other journals, some daily, 
some weekly, of various character. Two are 
in a native dialect. Some six or seven are in 
Spanish. 

Irrigation has been given much attention, 
and a comprehensive plan for its general adop- 
tion is being carried out. 

The principal crop thus raised is rice. At first 
thought one would consider it strange that it 
is necessary to irrigate where the precipitation 
of rain is several times what it is in the best 
agricultural States here at home. The fact is, 
however, that rice is so delicate that a drought 
at a critical time will often ruin an entire plant- 
ing ; and further, with irrigation, several crops 
can be raised, when only one is possible other- 
wise. 

The first large accomplishment in this line 
of work, and upon which a large sum has been 
expended, is to be the reclamation of a tract of 
ten thousand acres of untillable land, in the 
province of Tarlac; this would have been al- 



158 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

ready completed had it not been attended by 
engineering miscalculations. 

There is a Bureau of Science that through its 
publications, distributed as public documents, 
supplies the latest scientific information to the 
main industries. 

It was the belief of the people that fodder 
for animals could not be grown in the Islands, 
and it had to be imported at a very high price. 
In but little time we introduced alfalfa and 
teosinte from Mexico, with great success. 

We bought thousands of carabaos throughout 
the other Oriental countries after the rinderpest 
epidemic and sold them to the farmers for less 
than cost. 

Formerly most of the vegetables reaching the 
important Island markets came from China. 
The Filipinos have learned from us that they 
can supply this market themselves. A few 
simple directions from the Agricultural Depart- 
ment were all that was required to set the move- 
ment afoot. 

The Philippines were a land destitute of 
native horses fitted for the demands upon them ; 
they were too small to be suitable. That condi- 
tion we are changing by importations and in- 
telligent crossing of the native mares with Arab 
and small Morgan stallions. 

In the handling of forest timber. In the plant- 
ing, care, and reaping of crops on the farm, 



THE OMNIBUS CLAUSE 159 

in the culture of tobacco and sugar-cane, the 
most modern machinery is at work, gradually 
teaching its value to those who never before 
had seen anything but hand and carabao labor. 
Probably there is no important machine in 
America that has not its counterpart in the 
Islands, except perhaps for the mere variations 
of magnitude. 

The establishment of the Philippine con- 
stabulary has been one of the most potent 
innovations of our work out there. It was or- 
ganized in 1 90 1, its officers selected from volun- 
teers recently mustered out and from soldiers 
of the regular army. These young men were 
given a few rifles and some money and sent 
into every province under instructions to en- 
list natives for the service. The result is the 
present splendid force of Filipinos which main- 
tains peace and order in every civilized prov- 
ince — and in some others. In the first days 
none of the commissioned officers were natives. 
To-day fully twenty per cent of them are 
Filipinos, and others will be advanced as rapidly 
as they develop the requisite qualities. Next 
to baseball, many are inclined to believe that 
the constabulary is the most active single 
civilizing agent in our administration. The 
personnel has ranged from seventy-five hun- 
dred to the present roll of five thousand. The 
prospect before every Filipino boy that he may 



i6o THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

at some time be a member of this body is enough 
to stimulate him to great efforts to improve. 
These straight young soldiers, full of the snap 
and vigor that the best of regulars exhibit, 
are absolutely trustworthy, and they main- 
tain a morale that is most admirable and which 
may be seen reflected in an uplift of the entire 
surrounding country. Of course, now they 
are seldom called actively into stirring work, 
their presence being sufficient to enforce order. 
But they are always occupied, either in main- 
taining a quarantine, repairing or constructing 
telegraph or telephone w^ires, or in similar labor 
that keeps the governmental machine in good 
running order. The Philippine Scouts, com- 
posed of natives, a part of our army, are doing 
equally good work. 

Then we took a census in 1 903-1 904 that was 
comprehensive enough to give the intelligent 
student the first authentic, exhaustive account 
of the resources, peoples, and industries of the 
Archipelago, without which no large considera- 
tion of our problems and no scheme of an elec- 
tive participation in the central government 
was possible. 

The Philippine Government Act of Congress, 
of July I, 1902, provided that two years after 
the publication of this census, if the Islands 
were in a sufficient state of tranquillity to de- 
serve it, a general election should be held for 






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THE OMNIBUS CLAUSE i6i 

the choice of delegates to a national assembly, 
constituting the lower house of a legislative 
body, of which the Philippine Commission 
would be the upper branch. 

Such an election was called for July 30, 
1907, At the same time another innovation 
was supplied : the people in the thirty-four 
organized provinces would for the first time 
vote upon their governors, who until then had 
been elected by the vice-presidents and the 
town councilors. 

The basis of representation to the Assembly 
was one delegate to every ninety thousand of 
the population, and one for a major fraction 
thereof — except that each province should 
have at least one representative. Thirty- 
four provinces were to be represented with a 
total of eighty delegates. 

These gentlemen assembled at Manila upon 
the 1 6th of the following October, and in 
the presence of Mr. Taft, then Secretary of 
War, who had journeyed to the Islands for 
the occasion, constituted the first Philippine 
Assembly, which, while its enactments must 
have the assent of the upper house (the Philip- 
pine Commission, in whose appointment the 
natives have no voice), is still a very Important 
body In the government. Thus did we fulfill 
another promise. 

In this first election, that of 1907, there was 



i62 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

a total vote in all the Islands of 98,251, in a 
total registration of 104,966. The percentage 
of the total civilized population that voted was 
1. 41. Only 7206 votes were cast in Manila. 

The proportion of registered voters qualified 
to vote for members of the Assembly to the 
Island population is 3.03 per cent. The pro- 
portion of votes to population cast in the next 
election was 2.81 per cent, the total vote being 
192,975, or nearly double what it was two years 
before. The fact should be noted that over 
ninety per cent of the registration cast their 
ballots. 

The qualifications of voters have been already 
stated in Chapter Two. 

Lest this be misapprehended, it should be 
said that in those of the United States which 
do not have universal suffrage, there is not one 
which offers so many different avenues of quali- 
fications, and in many of our States the require- 
ments are far more rigid. 

It is difficult to see how any man who can- 
not meet these requirements is capable of 
understanding what a modern government is 
or how it should be conducted. To know 
that only three per cent of the eight million 
people of these Islands are taking part in the 
central government, is to see the magnitude of 
the task that remains to be done. Probably 
no other single fact can be found that is so 



THE OMNIBUS CLAUSE 163 

convincing to this effect. It certainly has 
large bearing upon what would be the result 
were we to withdraw altogether from the 
Islands in any way that would permit the in- 
habitants to decide the control. 

Road, trail, and bridge work has been very 
actively promoted among the wild peoples of 
the northern mountains of Luzon. In what 
is known as the Mountain Province there are 
seven hundred and thirty miles of excellent, 
low-grade horse trail. In one sub-province, 
twenty thousand men worked in 191 1 for ten 
days in widening and improving these trails, 
and it would appear that nowhere else in the 
Islands has so much good been done to the 
people as among the fiercest tribes. They are 
divided into seven sub-provinces for closer 
administration, with exceptionally intelligent 
Americans in charge of each. 

Wonders have been worked by showing 
these people that it is their welfare only that 
we desire. Head-hunting has been completely 
suppressed, the trails are unsafe only at rare 
intervals, government stores where the natives 
may buy goods cheaply and sell their products 
at a good profit have been installed at frequent 
intervals, and peace and good will have been 
firmly established. The chieftains are co- 
operating, and a complete social revolution is 
well advanced. 



1 64 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

The wealth of some of these tribes is rather 
astounding. For example, there are the Ifu- 
gaos, who have the most wonderful systems of 
terraced rice fields in the world. Single walls 
frequently exceed fifty feet in height, and series 
of terraces often rise thousands of feet above 
the rivers where they begin. There are one 
hundred and twenty-five thousand members 
of the tribe, and their per capita wealth is three 
hundred and sixty dollars. The Ifugaos, to- 
gether with all the rest of the wild men of the 
Islands, hate the Tagalogs with wholesale 
cordiality, despise them for their low state of 
physical development, and detest them for 
the cruelties to which the lowland race has al- 
ways subjected them, wherever opportunity 
has arisen. 

KThe conditions among some of the Moros 
have recently greatly improved. American 
and European capital is being heavily invested 
among them in plantations, sawmills, and 
timber concessions. The plantations produce 
rubber, coffee, cocoanut, sugar-cane, and rice. 
The natives work the forests for wax, gutta- 
percha, nipa, various barks, and the like, and 
do an extensive business in button shell, fresh 
fish, pearl shell, vegetables, and fruits. French 
buyers are on the ground with offers for all 
pearls as fast as they are delivered. Cattle, 
horse, and hog raising are steadily increasing; 






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THE OMNIBUS CLAUSE 165 

and as rapidly as possible a complete revolution 
has been worked in sanitary and, therefore, in 
health matters. The danger from infectious 
diseases is now entirely negligible. 

Mr. Taft and all his successors had urged 
that Congress permit the unlimited free entry 
into Island ports of all articles grown, pro- 
duced, or manufactured in the United States 
(rice excepted). Their recommendations were 
at last adopted in what is designated as the 
"Philippine Tariff Law of 1909." In the same 
year "The Payne Tariff Law" reciprocated by 
admitting Philippine products or manufactures, 
except rice, with certain limitations of the 
amount of sugar, tobacco, and cigars. Of the 
effects of these acts we shall speak later. 

The remarkable showing made near the close 
of Chapter Two of the extent to which as early 
as 1903 we had admitted the natives into their 
government has been constantly bettered year 
by year. 

I All the provincial officers, 995 in number, 
are now Filipinos, except twenty- two American 
treasurers and fourteen American subordi- 
nates. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 
is a Filipino, and the court is composed of four 
Americans and three natives. The Philip- 
pine Commission has four natives and five 
Americans, and in the civil service the propor- 
tion of natives to Americans has gradually 



1 66 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

increased from forty per cent in 1903 to sixty 
per cent in 1907, sixty-three per cent in 1909, 
and sixty-seven per cent by the latest in- 
formation. 

In 191 1, in all the various municipal and 
township governments, there were 108 Ameri- 
cans to 12,685 natives. There were 2633 
Americans and 4981 Filipinos, with a perma- 
nent status in the governmental civil service, 
indicating that since 1905 there has been a 
net decrease of Americans of 674, while in the 
same period there has been a net increase of 
natives of 958. 

The following recent statement of the present 
governor-general, Mr. Forbes, with respect to 
this matter, seems so concise and full of so 
much common sense that it is adopted as 
sound. 

"The so-called Filipinization of the service," 
he says, "has progressed more during the past 
year than in the two preceding years. This 
fact does not seem to satisfy the advocates 
of a more rapid Filipinization of the service, 
as their eyes seem to be fixed upon the higher 
salaried positions, and they let the fact of the 
steady increase in the percentage of Filipinos 
to Americans pass by unnoticed. It is neces- 
sary, however, to proceed on intelligent lines 
by gradual processes and to make changes only 
when it is clearly shown that no disadvantage 
to the service will ensue when a change is made. 



THE OMNIBUS CLAUSE 167 

Two classes of disadvantages must be taken 
into consideration : One is the demoralization 
of the service where American employees are 
displaced, to the possible acceleration of the al- 
ready alarming high rate at which the Americans 
are leaving the service ; and the second is with 
reference to the capacity of the Filipino to 
properly fulfill the duties of the position. 
There are some classes of work in which Ameri- 
cans are necessary ; for example, it is not be- 
lieved advisable to reduce the number of Ameri- 
can school-teachers ; in fact, it would give me 
the keenest pleasure were the finances such as 
to justify doubling the number of American 
teachers in the Islands, as it is impossible to get 
Filipinos who can teach the English language as 
can Americans. It is not my purpose to Filipi- 
nize the constabulary to any very great extent. 
I believe the maintenance of order had best be 
conducted by American officers. It is my 
belief that in the judiciary the proportion should 
be one half American to one half Filipino. 
It is important that certain proportions of the 
officers in the attorney-general's and prosecut- 
ing attorney's offices, in the force of engineers, 
and in the executive positions in the bureau 
should be American for a number of years to 
come. On the other hand it is my belief that 
there are many positions in which the number 
of Filipinos in the service ought to be very 
largely increased. It is unfortunately true 
that in the matter of public works it is impos- 
sible to find Filipinos equipped to do the work 
of engineers. Few Filipinos have devoted 
themselves to the science of engineering, and it 



i68 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

is impossible to find enough Filipinos equipped 
to take on these duties. In the matter of 
veterinarians, not only has the government 
been unable to find them, but the Filipinos 
have not cooperated in the efforts of the gov- 
ernment to educate them, it having been found 
that there are very few applicants for the 
veterinary school which the government un- 
dertook to establish. 

"There are many positions, however, where 
more Filipinos could be employed with dis- 
tinct benefit to the service, and the attention 
of all responsible officers will be called to the 
fact that it is the desire of the administration 
that the percentage of Filipinos in the service 
be increased with greater rapidity." 



CHAPTER IX 

THE AMERICAN PERSONNEL 

High attainments of our most important officials in 
the Islands — Young experts filling the executive 
places — Americans in the service compelled to 
leave the Islands at stated periods for their health 
— Revolution in manner of living since the early 
days — The beach-comber now only in history — 
The harm he and other dissolute Americans 
wrought — Our first American treasurers largely 
dishonest. 

In carrying out these great efforts to give the 
Filipinos the same opportunities for progress 
that we have in the United States, we have 
been scrupulously careful in choosing for the 
high places the Americans who should repre- 
sent us upon the ground. 

Mr. Taft was made the first governor in 
1901. Associated with him were the other 
members of the Taft Commission, who be- 
came heads of departments, Worcester of the 
Interior, Wright of Commerce and Police, Ide 
of Finance and Justice, and Moses of Public 
Instruction. We have often had Washington 

169 



I70 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

cabinets that were of far less eminence. Mr. 
Worcester still remains. 

By the time Mr. Taft was transferred to 
Washington in January, 1904, after nearly 
four years in the Philippines, the Island gov- 
ernment was as smooth-running as our own. 
Mr. Wright succeeded him and then became 
our ambassador to Japan in the spring of 1906. 

In April, 1906, Mr. Ide became governor- 
general, resigning after several months' service 
to go to Spain as our minister. He was suc- 
ceeded in September by James F. Smith, who 
came to the Islands as colonel of California 
Volunteers, in 1898, and had since been gov- 
ernor of Negros, collector of customs at Manila, 
brigadier-general of volunteers, associate jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court of the Islands, and a 
member of the Commission since 1902. No 
man of our race knew the people and their 
needs better than he; and according to Gov- 
ernor Forbes, to whom the credit has always 
been given, it was Smith who suggested the 
doubling of the cedula tax that cut the Gordian 
knot and set Forbes's road system upon its 
feet, as related in Chapter Six. Mr. Smith 
was also the associate of Mr. Taft before the 
Vatican in the Friar Land negotiations. 

He was succeeded in November, 1909, by 
Mr. Forbes, who still occupies the position. 

Of the other members of the Commission 



THE AMERICAN PERSONNEL 171 

who have served from time to time, it is but 
their due to say that they have never lowered 
the standard set in the beginning in any par- 
ticular, and our country could scarcely have 
furnished men more worthy in character, ability, 
and experience for leadership in the Islands. 
The one now most in the public eye is W. 
Morgan Shuster, who became an international 
figure in Persia in 191 1. 

In Mr. Forbes, who came In the summer of 
1904 as Secretary of Commerce and Police, the 
Island administration, as already said, was 
provided with Its first big business man. In 
him, with his youth, his high education, his 
athletic qualifications, his experience in big 
business, In engineering problems, and in audit- 
ing, and his natural philanthropy, the gov- 
ernment was provided with just the ofiicial 
it then required. Up to that time practically 
all our efforts had been directed to setting up a 
government upon which, as a foundation, we 
could give Industrial stability, progress, and 
development. As soon as that foundation was 
laid, and liberty, equality, and opportunity 
had become assured for every Filipino, President 
Roosevelt and Mr. Taft sought all over the 
United States for the best man to develop the 
industrial superstructure ; that man was de- 
termined to be Mr. Forbes, and nobody has 
questioned the correctness of the judgment. 



172 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

As we shall soon see, an industrial revolution 
began with his arrival; he was equal to the 
great demand. 

This exceptional record of the chief govern- 
ing body is undoubtedly due to the fact that 
Mr. Taft personally has been appointing these 
men ever since 1900, either as President of 
the Commission, Governor, Secretary of War, 
or President of the United States. 

Upon several occasions, violent and virulent 
attacks have been made in America upon the 
conduct of some of the Commission, but in 
every instance Congressional investigation has 
resulted in exoneration. 

For other high positions, the most expert 
men in the United States who could be induced 
to go have been employed. Taking these, 
man for man, they appear fully equal to similar 
officials in our governmental service. They 
were mostly the youngest men who could be 
procured, who had become eminent here in 
their especial branches. 

For the civil service positions, young college 
men have been especially sought, and every 
effort made to attract them. The spacious 
houses in Manila of the Elks, the Army and 
Navy, the Manila, and Polo clubs have been 
thrown open to them, as have the doors of the 
highest officials ; and society, while hardly 
surpassed in any particular in any capital, 



THE AMERICAN PERSONNEL 173 

has the rare attribute of asking nobody for a 
pedigree or a bank account. It demands only 
character. Eight hundred automobiles fly 
about Manila, where there were almost none 
five or six years ago. Polo came with Forbes, 
who is an expert, and his imported ponies set 
a standard that gave the sport the same place 
that it occupies in India, England, France, 
and the United States. At Baguio a summer 
resort has been created in the high mountains, 
with a climate that few places in America can 
surpass, and to that point, by a most beautiful 
automobile road that is a model of engineering, 
the administrative forces are moved in the wet, 
hot season. A month's vacation is given to 
all in the service, each year, and besides there 
is about the same length of time allowed to 
accumulate, year by year, until it will give 
opportunity, with free transportation, to visit 
the home land. It is desired that all shall leave 
the Islands at least every three years, and to 
enforce this, as far as possible, cumulative leave 
is not permitted after a period of five years 
since last availed of. And we may add that 
few want to remain in ''the States," as they call 
their country, after their leaves have expired, 
so attractive has the Island life become.^ 

This denotes a revolution that would not 

^ For a hostile view of Insular Service, vide Blount, "American 
Occupation of the Philippines," Ch. XXIV (1912). 



174 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

have been deemed possible ten years ago, when 
existence there was unbearable, with its tin 
pans for bathtubs, its canned milk, a total lack 
of vegetables, clouds of flies and mosquitoes, 
with lizards running up and down the walls of 
the dining-room in the best hotel, whose ac- 
commodations were a warrant for arson. 

But there has been a darker picture that must 
be mentioned in this chapter. The Americans 
were not always of the present class out there. 
The beach-comber and the bum followed our 
flag ; and before peace had been really secured, 
the large majority of the towns from one end 
of the Archipelago to the other were afflicted 
with dissolute, drunken, lawless Americans, 
who were subsisting upon the labor of the low 
Filipino women with whom they cohabited. 
They were quarrelsome and dishonest. They 
secured what money they needed in addition to 
that supplied by the means just mentioned, by 
borrowing, gambling, begging, or stealing it 
from the natives — and our aim in the Islands, 
we had told the inhabitants, was to give them 
the advantages of American civilization ! 

This gentry we at last drove out, mostly by 
deportation under a Vagrancy Act; but what 
they did there will long deter our progress and 
that of the natives. 

But even worse were our first experiments 
with the Americans we appointed as provincial 



THE AMERICAN PERSONNEL 175 

treasurers, because we felt that we could not 
yet be sufficiently sure of native honesty. Of 
the entire thirty-four, one half became embez- 
zlers 1 That, of course, had tremendous effect 
upon our prestige. In the face of that ter- 
rible showing, still we had to proclaim that the 
Americans had come to the Islands for the 
benefit of the Filipinos. The only satisfaction 
to be derived from the incident was that we 
sent every one of these criminals to Bilibid 
prison In Manila with sentences of twenty-five 
years. 



CHAPTER X 

THE BUSINESS EXPANSION 

Total Imports and exports averaged thirty-five mil- 
lion dollars under Spain — In five years under 
us they increased to sixty-six million dollars and 
in 1912 reached the figure of one hundred and five 
million dollars — Quickening efi'ect of the Payne 
Tariff Bill — Great growth in the tobacco and 
sugar industries — Showing of the internal reve- 
nues — A complete industrial revolution accom- 
plished. 

If the tremendous works and efforts that 
have been detailed in the preceding chapters 
have been performed with intelligence, it is 
but reasonable to expect them to have resulted 
in some progress that can be mathematically 
demonstrated. 

Under Spain, according to the best informa- 
tion her records show, the total valuation 
of Philippine exports and imports for the 
last five years of her occupation averaged 
thirty-five million dollars. In the war days of 
1899, they fell to twenty-five million dollars. 
A year later they went to $40,350,000; to 
$53,490,000 in 1901 ; three millions more in 

176 



THE BUSINESS EXPANSION 177 

1902, and to sixty-six million dollars in 1903, 
about double the average under Spain. This fig- 
ure was not exceeded until 1910, the first year 
under the two new tariff acts before mentioned, 
which gave free trade between the United 
States and the Islands, with limitations which 
as yet need not be enforced. 

The first evidence of what the Payne Bill 
was to mean to the Filipinos was a sharp in- 
crease in the price of tobacco and sugar, prices 
that enabled the natives greatly to increase 
production, to pay their obligations, to buy 
more carabao, and to raise wages. The amount 
of land under sugar cultivation largely increased. 
In some of the provinces enough seed cane 
could not be had, and the people cut up the 
growing cane instead of reducing it to sugar, 
in order to make seed for the next crop. In 
Occidental Negros the activity has been es- 
pecially marked, and the proprietors of large 
tracts of land have increased that devoted to 
sugar to an amount estimated to be fifty-two 
per cent of the total cultivated area. One of 
the larger owners of sugar haciendas in that 
province reports that he purchased five hundred 
carabao during 1910, doubled the acreage of 
his sugar plantation during 191 1, and in 1912 
put up a modern sugar mill. Most of the 
large estates have paid off their indebtedness 
contracted during the times of the failure of 



178 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

crops and the worst of the rinderpest ; and the 
customs reports of Iloilo and Cebu show that 
the unprecedented number of more than fifty- 
five hundred draft animals landed there in 191 1. 

But the greatest revival occurred in the to- 
bacco industry, not only among the tobacco 
growers, mostly to be found in northern Luzon, 
particularly in the Cagayan Valley, but also 
among the cigar manufacturers, centered at 
Manila. 

The Payne Bill provided that not more than 
one hundred and fifty million Philippine cigars 
could be imported into the United States free 
of duty. Prior to this law, probably most of 
the Philippine cigars sold in America were 
made in New Jersey from plants grown there, 
and in 1908 there were but thirty thousand of 
the genuine sort that came to us. The first 
year of the Payne Bill sent this total up to 
eighty-four million. But in this rush poor 
quality crept in too often, and new customers 
who might have been held by good cigars were 
driven away by bad ones, so in 191 1 we took 
but twenty-three million. There is assurance, 
however, that regulations to improve the 
quality now enforced at the exporting points 
will gradually bring the trade up once more. 
But, even at the figure last quoted, the revival 
in the exports to us is enormous, an increase 
from thirty thousand to twenty-three million. 



THE BUSINESS EXPANSION 179 

The amount of internal revenues exhibits 
great increase and must be a true indicator 
of the rejuvenation. These revenues are col- 
lected on cigarettes, cigars, and liquors, and, at 
the rate of one third of one per cent from manu- 
facturers and merchants who do business ex- 
ceeding ^250 per annum, reckoned upon the 
gross value of goods sold or exchanged (but not 
exported, and not counting spirits, tobacco, and 
farm products). 

In the first year of the Payne Bill, this rev- 
enue increased by twenty per cent, and in 191 1 
by forty per cent more, a total gain of sixty 
per cent; and in 191 1 the gross sales of every- 
thing by these taxed classes showed an increase 
of more than one third over those of 1909. 
Even the imports from Europe and countries 
other than our own increased largely, from 
twenty-three million dollars in 1909 to thirty 
million dollars in 191 1, and to $33,945,825 in 
191 2; while with us they grew (exclusive of 
gold and silver) from $4,691,000 in 1909 to 
$10,775,000 in 1910, to $19,483,000 in 191 1, 
and to $20,604,155 in 1912. 

The total exports and imports in 1909, be- 
fore the Payne Bill was passed, amounted to 
fifty-nine million dollars. In 1910 they rose 
to seventy-seven million dollars, in 1911 to 
$84,640,000, and in 191 2 to one hundred and 
five million dollars. When attention is called 



i8o THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

to the total in' 1899 of only twenty-five million 
dollars, the enormous extension is readily 
grasped. It is over four hundred per cent. 

(The figures in the last two paragraphs indi- 
cate a business expansion of one hundred and 
eighty million dollars gold in three years.) 

And we, in the United States, secured much 
direct benefit from these tariff bills, as the fol- 
lowing shows : 

During the first nine months of the new act, 
commercial imports from the United States 
increased from ^4,700,000 to ^10,775,000, or 
over 125 per cent, for the initial time placing 
this country first among the exporters to the 
Islands. The rule in practically every tropi- 
cal country is that cotton cloths supply the 
largest item among imports. This is notably 
the case in the Philippines, and so it is not sur- 
prising that importations of cotton goods from 
this country increased about three hundred 
per cent the first year of free trade, thus di- 
verting some three hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars worth of business of this character to 
ourselves from the various European countries 
and India. 

The year before the Payne Bill, the Philip- 
pines bought from us three hundred and eighty- 
six thousand dollars worth of illuminating oil. 
The year later their purchases amounted to nine 
hundred and forty-two thousand dollars of it. 



THE BUSINESS EXPANSION i8i 

Up to 1909 the wheat flour trade had been 
about evenly divided between us and Aus- 
tralia. The first year under the new tariff, 
we had eighty-two per cent of the total. In 
i9iowe sold the Islands 170 percent more iron 
in plates and sheets than in 1909. In 1909 
the Islands bought ^275 worth of cement from 
us. In 1910 they acquired one hundred and 
ninety-three thousand dollars worth of that 
commodity. The Islands promptly increased 
their importations of fish and fish products 
over three hundred per cent. It was the same 
with coffee, only the increase was almost 
seven hundred per cent. Of boots and shoes 
they took nearly three times as many. The 
story of other commodities, such as wax and 
paraffin, of automobiles and carriages, Ameri- 
can-made silks, brass, copper, and lumber, is 
the same in general tendency. 

Turning to the benefits derived by the 
Filipinos, we find that they sold to us in 1909 
ten million dollars worth of their products. 
In 1910 they sent us ^18,750,000 worth of 
them. In 1909, the Islands sold to us sugar to 
the value of six hundred and fourteen thou- 
sand dollars. In 1910 they sold us between 
eight and nine times as much, amounting to a 
valuation of five and a half millions. The offi- 
cial figures for 191 1 show that they sent us 
$7,144,000, more than eleven times what they 



1 82 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

were forwarding to us before the tariff was taken 
off. There is also a great advance in their sales 
to us of copra, of hemp, of Philippine hats, 
of which latter they sold to us in 1909 but 
eighty-eight hundred dollars worth. In 1910 
they sent over one hundred and twelve thousand 
dollars worth of them. Copra is now the leading 
export, with $16,514,749 worth in 191 2, an 
increase of nearly fifty per cent over 191 1. 
We have accomplished an industrial revolu- 
tion in the Philippines. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE MONEY COST TO AMERICA 

Since 1902 the expense of the Islands to the United 
States has been only for the support of our armed 
forces — How that expense may be itemized — 
Ten million dollars per annum the average — 
Credits that must be made to the account. 

In any comprehensive study of our future 
policy toward the Philippines, we can hardly 
avoid computing what they are costing us. 
Concerning this, most widely differing state- 
ments have been made, apparently, however, 
not because of any real difficulty in reaching 
substantial accord, but for the reason that the 
various computers have had an interest in 
making the figures large or small to support 
certain preconceived positions. The injection 
of the Philippine problem into politics has 
been mainly responsible for this situation, and 
as an illustration we may take a recent Congres- 
sional report which estimates that it is costing 
us annually twenty-six million dollars to main- 
tain our armed forces in the Islands. This 
enormous total is easily reached by multiply- 

183 



1 84 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

Ing the mean number of soldiers out there by 
fifteen hundred dollars, upon the basis that 
*'It is estimated that it costs the government 
fifteen hundred dollars annually to maintain 
each soldier in the foreign service." 

The surprising thing about such an assertion 
is that the total is made so small. A much 
larger amount could just as well have been pred- 
icated upon that phrase "It is estimated." 
The facts are substantially as follows : 
For the last ten years, we have averaged 
5097 men in the Philippine Scouts, whose 
4971 enlisted men are all Filipinos, paid $7.50 
per month, just half of what our American 
troops receive. In a special report to the Presi- 
dent, dated January 23, 1908, Secretary of War 
Taft stated that the Department reckoned five 
hundred dollars as the cost in toto to the United 
States for each man in the Scouts. The pay roll 
of this organization for 191 1 was ^1,019,562. 
The report of the Commissary-general of the 
army puts the cost of the Philippine daily ration 
at ^.2456. This means half a million dollars 
for the Scouts' rations for the year 191 1. There 
are also the various allowances for clothing, 
marksmanship, travel, certificates of merit, etc., 
which, estimated at two hundred dollars per man 
of the total force of 5097, adds a round million 
to the previous million and a half dollars, giving 
us two and a half million dollars as the cost of 



THE MONEY COST TO AMERICA 185 

the Scouts to the United States for the year. 
Mr. Taft reckoned at the rate of ^250 per man, 
a total of ^2,548,500, substantially the same 
figure. 

Turning to the cost of our regulars, officers 
and men, 13,501 of whom we have kept out 
there upon the average for the past ten years, 
Mr. Taft says in the same report that the ex- 
pense of their transportation and maintenance, 
over what these items would be had the troops 
remained in America, he estimates as ^250 per 
man, which amounts to but ^3,375,250 per 
annum. This figure appears to be too small, 
as the following details will demonstrate. 

The appropriation by Congress in 191 1 for 
extra pay for ofiicers and men of the army be- 
cause in foreign service was ^1,196,000. Two 
thirds of the force thus engaged was in the 
Philippines. We may therefore roughly con- 
sider that these last used a similar proportion of 
the appropriation, or eight hundred thousand 
dollars. 

The average cost for these ten years for the 
army transport service between the various 
Philippine Islands was eight hundred and eighty- 
nine thousand dollars per annum. To this 
should be added the cost of troop transportation 
across the Pacific and back; and if the Phil- 
ippines be charged with ^2,198,000, which is 
two thirds of the average annual cost for the 



1 86 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

ten years in question, of all our ocean trans- 
ports, it is a maximum estimate. The cost 
of cabling to and from the army in the Is- 
lands has averaged forty-four thousand dol- 
lars per annum for the decade. It costs two 
cents per diem more for the Philippine ration 
than for the ration in the United States, or 
$92,994 a year for the 12,739 enlisted men we 
have averaged yearly since 1902. We have av- 
eraged, for the same period, to spend one hun- 
dred and seventy-five thousand dollars each 
year for coast and geodetic survey work 
in the Archipelago. To this should be added, 
as an outside figure, an annual depreciation 
of ten per cent of the original cost of the 
fortifications and accessories thereto, and of 
the barracks and quarters erected in the 
Islands prior to August 20, 191 2, their com- 
bined figures, according to the War Department, 
amounting to $15,327,753. The fortifications 
cost $4,494,305, and the barracks and quarters, 
$10,833,448. The figure for depreciation and 
upkeep is $1,532,775. If all these items are 
added, they total $5,731,769. Allowances to 
the extent of some three hundred and twenty- 
eight thousand dollars for ofiicers' quarters (com- 
puted at thirty-six dollars per month, for three 
rooms, for each of the 761 ofiicers) and forty 
thousand dollars, to the same number, for fuel 
and light, should be added. The total is now 



THE MONEY COST TO AMERICA 187 

increased to ^6,099,769, and adding the two 
and a half million dollars that the Scouts cost 
us, as admitted by Mr. Taft, whose interest it 
is to make the figure as low as possible, we 
have the annual average cost of the Philip- 
pines to us for the past ten years as $8,599,769. 
If we allow fifteen per cent and approximately 
a quarter of a million dollars for extras and good 
measure, the gross is ten million dollars. This 
is certainly an outside estimate. 

There are other figures that should be re- 
membered. For example, we spent one hundred 
and sixty-nine million dollars upon our forces 
in the Islands from June 30, 1898, to July i, 
1902.^ Then we voted three million dollars 
to the natives, when their carabaos were killed 
by the rinderpest in 1 902-1 903. Congress also 
donated three hundred and fifty-one thousand 
dollars to aid the Insular Government in com- 
pleting its census. If to these figures we add a 
hundred million dollars for the total running 
expenses, as just computed above, for the last 
ten years, and $15,327,753 as the cost of the 
fortifications, barracks, and quarters, the total 
cost of the Islands to us up to June 30, 191 2, 
is two hundred and eighty-seven million dollars. 

If anybody thinks that if we did not have the 
Islands we should reduce our army by discharg- 

^ Congressional Record, February 25, 1908 ; speech of J. L. 

Slayden, pp. 2532 et seq. 



1 88 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

ing therefrom the regulars we keep in the Phil- 
ippines, he may increase the ten million dollars 
and the two hundred and eighty-seven million 
dollars by the proper figure. But it is rather 
idle to assume anything of that character. 
Whether the army would or would not be reduced 
is entirely in the keeping of Congress alone. The 
weight of the evidence is that the American peo- 
ple will not now favor any reduction of our army. 
Certainly, irrespective of the Philippines, our for- 
eign aifairs are growing more and more delicate, 
especially to the south of us and in China. The 
Spanish War taught us the foolhardiness of too 
small a regular force, and the lessons of that 
conflict are not yet dim. 

As for the additional naval expense which 
may be thought to have been undertaken by 
reason of the possession of the Islands, that is 
negligible, for it is evident that we keep no 
greater naval force in the Far East than we 
should anyhow. For many years we have 
maintained the Pacific Fleet, and everybody 
now realizes that it must probably be increased 
to the size of that in the Atlantic, for it will 
be but a short time, as the history of nations 
computes time, when our western coast will be 
as important from a national point of view as is 
the eastern seaboard to-day. 

There are, too, important credits that we 
must give to this account. Upon at least two 



THE MONEY COST TO AMERICA 189 

occasions we have put men very promptly into 
China because we had them in Manila. Each 
was a most critical period. It may entertain 
some people to try to put into figures just how 
many dollars we saved by having regiments on 
the China coast within fifty hours of these 
particular outbreaks instead of after thirty 
days, the usual time consumed in transporting 
troops across the Pacific, assuming that we 
have them at the port of departure. Inability 
upon our part to have done our full share 
in the two instances referred to might very 
easily have swung the balance of power in the 
Far East farther away from us and toward the 
nations whose troops were on the ground. We 
have maintained the *'Open Door" in China 
because we have had, upon every occasion 
when it seemed about to be closed, first, as 
much of a force there as anybody else, and, 
second, our occupation of the Philippines gave 
us substantial reason for asserting a command- 
ing attitude in anything affecting that region. 
If one try to estimate what this dominating 
position be worth in money to America, he 
will soon find himself figuring in the hundreds 
of millions. 

Then there is the money value of knowing 
how to handle troops in the tropical zone, and 
of having an efficient transport service, in- 
stead of having to make one, as had to be done 



I90 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

in 1898. At that time we wasted large sums 
because we lacked this knowledge; we killed 
hundreds of men by disease. 

Disallowing these offsets, at the very most 
the Islands have cost us ten million dollars 
per annum for the last decade ; but for that 
sum, our achievements in these distant lands 
as described in the preceding chapters, unless 
the contrary appears from the context, have 
cost the United States nothing. They have all 
been liquidated from funds of the Insular 
Government. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE PROBLEM IN 1913 

Our policy in 191 3 — The gente illustrada opposed 
to introduction of necessary capital — - The clamor 
for independence — Consideration of the three 
possible courses open to the United States — 
Evidences of progress — Consequences of our 
continued occupation — The uncertainties of the 
future. 

As the foregoing chapters have set out, we 
have performed veritable prodigies of altruism. 
Unquestionably we have done more for the mass 
of the Filipinos than any other nation ever did 
for a colony; and yet we have hardly made a 
beginning, so vast is the task. 

The present governor-general, Forbes, thus 
stated his views of the situation confronting 
us at the time of his inauguration : 

"Analyzing the instructions of President 
McKinley, we may fairly take as the goal toward 
which we are to steer, the happiness, peace, and 
prosperity of the Philippine people. In so 
far as the people are to-day happy, peaceful, 
and prosperous, we have succeeded ; in so far 

191 



192 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

as the people do not enjoy these blessings, we 
have not yet achieved success. The people 
are to-day peaceful. We can concentrate our 
attention in bringing them prosperity, secure 
in the belief that under just and equitable 
laws, under a wise and firm government, with 
that freedom of thought, of speech, of worship, 
of labor, and of opportunity which now pre- 
vail, happiness will not be found far away when 
the means of procuring it are abundantly at hand. 

"Here is a climate particularly favorable 
for some classes of products and capable of 
yielding vast returns to honest and intelligent 
expenditure of effort, and yet we have a people 
bemoaning their poverty and living from day 
to day without those reserve supplies so neces- 
sary where crops are uncertain [In 191 1, rice, 
the principal article of food, was imported into 
the Islands to the value of ^6,560,000. — F. C], 
without the alleviation from suffering which 
modern medicines and surgery can give, with- 
out the nourishing kinds of food so necessary 
to build up the strength of the body, without 
houses built to withstand the elements, without, 
in fact, most of those things which modern 
civilization believes to be necessary for the 
happiness of a community. 

"An analysis of the fundamental conditions 
of life reveals in part the reasons for these 
conditions. A very large proportion of the 
people have been held in that primitive condi- 
tion where each man supplied all of the things 
necessary for his own use and got along with 
what he could personally produce. We must 
bend our efforts to advance the day when each 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 193 

individual supplies the articles which he is 
best fitted to produce, which he sells to his 
fellow men, and uses the money thus gained to 
purchase of others the things which they can 
produce better and cheaper than he. This is 
the essence of trade, and this condition of 
affairs is impossible without economical means 
of transportation, hitherto wofully lacking. 

"Our success in accomplishing our principal 
object in the Islands, — namely, that of better- 
ing the conditions of the people, — may be 
best measured by the increase from time to 
time in the rate of wages, and the value of im- 
ports and exports. 

"What is needed here is capital. 

"Let us turn our attention to a few compara- 
tive figures. 

"The total population of Hawaii is 198,000 
people or about one fortieth of the population 
of the Philippine Islands, now approximately 
eight millions. The total exports from Ha- 
waii in 1907 were ^29,000,000. The total ex- 
ports from the Philippine Islands for the same 
year were $34,000,000. In other words, Ha- 
waii produced for export approximately thirty- 
six times as much per capita as did the Philip- 
pine Islands. 

"This is not because the laborers are superior, 
as Hawaii has come here in search of laborers 
and reports that those few whom they have 
obtained are equal to their Japanese, Korean, 
and other laborers. Porto Rico has one mil- 
lion people, or one eighth the population of 
the Philippine Islands, and in 1907 its exports 
were $27,000,000. 



194 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

"Porto Rico evidently does not exercise 
the same degree of economy in the use of its 
labor as does Hawaii, for it produces only one 
sixth as much per capita for export, and still 
Porto Rico exports six times as much per capita 
as do the people of the Philippine Islands. 
Were these Islands to produce for sale to other 
countries as much per capita as Porto Rico, 
the total exports would be $216,000,000. Were 
they to produce as much per capita as Hawaii, 
the total exports would be $1,179,000,000 a year. 

"The explanation of this lies in the fact 
that Hawaii has an abundance of capital, em- 
ploys modern methods of cultivation and manu- 
facture, modern freight-handling devices, and 
suitable and adequate steamship and railroad 
facilities. In other words, in Hawaii the work 
of the laborer counts ; in the Philippine Is- 
lands it does not. No, it is not labor that 
is wanted here, it is capital. . . . [Governor 
Forbes might have added a comparison with 
Java, which with less than half as much terri- 
tory not only supports four times as many 
people, exports, and does not import foodstuffs, 
but sends about $100,000,000 annually to Hol- 
land in profits. — F. C.] 

"I should like to see every one of the two 
million children of school age in these Islands 
receiving an education. The thought is griev- 
ous that any boy or girl in the Philippine 
Islands wanting to have an education should 
be unable to secure it because of failure of the 
government to provide facilities, and yet the 
resources of the Islands have not developed to 
that point where I feel we are justified in largely 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 195 

increasing the appropriation for education. 
When the time comes that facilities can be 
available, I shall not be opposed to a law pro- 
viding for compulsory education. The amount 
of education we shall be able to accomplish 
in ten j^ears will be very much greater if we 
devote our first money toward increasing the 
wealth of the people and later using the result- 
ing increase of revenues for extending our edu- 
cational facilities. I liken the work of the 
government on irrigation and improvement of 
transportation to cutting the strings which 
close the mouth of a purse of gold. The gold 
will pour forth and yield enough for all." 

While the recent remarkable business expan- 
sion that has occurred in the Islands since those 
words were spoken would vary this statement 
somewhat, I can devise none other which, upon 
the whole, appears to me so well to describe 
the Philippine Problem in 191 3 and my compre- 
hension of our present policy with respect to it. 

This policy to seek capital is bitterly opposed 
by the more prominent of the gente illustrada. 
Their position was first made evident in the 
matter of the Friar Lands, in Chapter Four. 

Upon the 6th of December, 19 10, the 
Philippine Assembly passed a resolution from 
which the following is an extract : 

" RESOLVED, That the Philippine Assembly 
do, and hereby does, declare, without entering 
upon a discussion of the legality or illegality of 



196 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

the matter, that the sale In large and unlimited 
tracts of the so-called friar estates to great cor- 
porations for their exploitation is contrary to the 
will, the sentiment, and the interests of the 
Philippine people." 

In a speech upon the floor of the House in 
Washington upon May i, 191 2, Hon. Manuel 
L. Quezon, one of the two Filipino Resident 
Commissioners to that body, said : 

"I am authorized to say, Mr. Speaker, and 
standing here now I do say, that the Filipino 
people would rather pay from general taxation, 
and if necessary from voluntary contributions, 
every cent that has been spent by the Philip- 
pine Government for the purchase of these 
lands than to see them sold to individuals or 
corporations for exploitation. And the reason 
for this, if I am to express it in a few words, 
is to be found in the following paragraph : We 
do not want vast landed estates created there. 
We do want a thrifty, hardy, land-owning 
body of citizens. Patriotism, thrift, and love 
of country does not exist in the breast of the 
peon who resides on a great sugar plantation, 
but rather thrives in the heart of the man whose 
feet are firmly planted in his own land. . . . 
Their views (those of the Philippine Commis- 
sion) are that the sooner the natural resources 
of the Philippines are developed, the better 
for the Filipinos themselves ; that the great 
need of the islands is capital, and that all 
possible means must be employed to bring 
into the islands large amounts of capital; and 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 197 

that one of these means is to permit the pur- 
chase, ownership, and holding of great land 
estates. ... In the long run, they (great 
corporations) monopolize the wealth of the 
country and deprive the large majority of the 
inhabitants of their just share of such wealth. 
This being so, the Filipinos would rather keep 
on the statute books of the Philippines their 
present land laws than to permit, under the 
pretense of development, the concentration in 
a few hands of the resources of their country." 

This position attracted to its support the 
active American foes of everything we have 
ever attempted in the Islands; but there was 
another argument produced that had still more 
weight with these fellow citizens of ours, and 
that was that the introduction of capital would 
forever destroy any hope of independence for 
the Philippines. 

The record of the serious attempt for imme- 
diate independence begins with the passage 
through the Assembly of the resolution, in 
May, 1910: 

" Whereas the Philippine Assembly, as the 
legitimate representative of the Filipino people, 
must be the faithful echo of what the latter 
thinks and feels : and 

''Whereas the Philippine nation, being posi- 
tively convinced that it possesses the actual 
capacity for self-government as a civilized 
nation, aspires ardently to be independent, 
and, trusting in the justice and in the tradi- 



198 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

tion of the Nation that now directs the fate and 
destiny of the Filipinos, anxiously hopes to 
obtain it as soon as practicable — immediately, 
if that be possible — from the Congress of the 
United States of America ; and 

*' Whereas in behalf of the good of the Philip- 
pines it is necessary that the Congress of the 
United States of America be informed by the 
people of the Philippines itself concerning the 
points stated above : Now, therefore, be it 

"RESOLVED, That the Philippine Assembly 
shall, by means of a memorial, lay at once and 
without delay before the Congress of the United 
States of America the said aptitude, desire, and 
expectation of the Philippine nation." 

In addition, both of the political parties, 
one always opposed to our occupation and the 
other heretofore in favor of it for some time to 
come, adopted resolutions to the same purport 
through their respective representatives in the 
Assembly, while Osmena, the exceedingly able 
presiding officer of that body, thus stated the 
gente illustrada attitude as he addressed it at the 
close of its initial session : 

"We Filipinos desire national independence, 
a desire existing before our second uprising 
against Spain and continuing thereafter equally 
under the shock of arms and the aegis of peace. 
We believe ourselves capable of ruling our own 
destinies. The phrase 'immediate independ- 
ence,' inscribed upon the banner of the majority, 
is neither a new inscription nor a new ideal. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 199 

'Immediate independence' is the motto of our 
country to-day and her motto forever, for it 
incarnates and signifies her true aspiration, 
that aspiration which has suffered neither 
change nor decay and which her children 
through all vicissitudes and adversities have 
never forgotten for a single moment; aye, not 
even in the moment of swearing allegiance, for 
that allegiance involves no repudiation of our 
ideals, and we believe allegiance to America 
still permits us to be faithful to our conscience 
as men and to our sacred desire for national 
independence. 

"Permit me, gentlemen of the Chamber, 
to declare solemnly before God and before the 
world, upon my conscience as a deputy and 
representative of my compatriots, and under 
my responsibility as president of this Chamber, 
that we believe the people desire independence, 
that it believes itself capable of leading an 
orderly existence, efficient both in internal and 
external affairs, as a member of the free and 
civilized nations ; and that we believe that if 
at this moment the United States should grant 
the suit of the Filipino people for liberty, it 
could discharge to the full its obligations 
toward itself and toward others, without detri- 
ment to liberty, to law, or to justice." 

These extracts appear fairly to express the 
views of the gente illustrada, the ten per cent 
who want to acquire the government of the 
other ninety per cent who would thus be com- 
pletely at their mercy. 



200 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

With these statements as a text, Quezon, in 
the speech before the American House, from 
which extracts have already been made, gave 
us sufficient warning of the gente illustrada 
opposition to our policy in the Islands, in these 
words : 

"There are many American officials in the 
Philippine Government and in the United 
States who, in their dealings with the Islands 
and their people, are proceeding upon the theory 
that there is no real desire upon the part of this 
Government ever to relinquish its control over 
the Philippines. Working under this, I hope, 
misapprehension, or perhaps deliberately try- 
ing to bring about a condition of affairs that 
will force this Government to retain the islands, 
these officials are endeavoring to do every- 
thing in their power which, in their opinion, 
will facilitate and insure the accomplishment 
of that end. 

"This, Mr. Speaker, explains satisfactorily 
the unyielding attitude of the Philippine Com- 
mission and of those who support its policy 
of inducing to come into the islands as much 
American capital as possible. They know 
that those in this country who invest their 
money in the Philippines in lands, in factories, 
in mines, or in any other enterprise will struggle 
and do their best to defeat any legislation pur- 
porting to recognize Philippine independence, 
not precisely because of their lack of confidence 
in the ability of the Filipino people to govern 
themselves and to protect the rights and prop- 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 201 

erties established in the islands, but because 
their investments will be safer under the joint 
guaranty and protection of both the Philip- 
pine Government and the Government of the 
United States. . . . 

"Do you believe, Mr. Speaker, that any one 
investor would ever, if he could prevent it, 
permit the United States to escape from its 
responsibility ? 

"For this reason, if we had now, or should 
we have, before any definite policy regarding 
the future connection between the Philippines 
and the United States is officially announced, 
many American capitalists interested in the 
Philippines, the inevitable result would be 
the permanent retention of the islands." 

To the American allies of the gente illustrada 
this contention appealed, and they have labored 
unceasingly to discourage our countrymen from 
making heavy investments in the Islands. 
As a tribute to their astuteness and indefatiga- 
bility the Islands are likely to lose in the Friar 
Lands some millions of dollars which the natives 
must make up by taxation. More recently 
these Americans have been issuing warnings 
to individuals who were considering large 
Philippine investments. For example, in the 
summer of 191 2, when Governor Forbes was 
in America, he met a large number of the 
most prominent capitalists in New York at a 
dinner and explained to them how capital was 
needed in the Archipelago and how it could 



202 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

be made to pay. The next day each gentleman 
who had been present and who could be reached 
received a telegram from the chief official of 
an American Anti-Imperialist organization, set- 
ting forth the dangers of Philippine investment : 
and timid as capital is, very likely Governor 
Forbes's efforts with those particular men will 
be fruitless. 

How much further this aggressive campaign 
against capital may extend, or where it may 
erupt next, nobody can foresee ; but those be- 
hind it do not need to be informed that if it be 
persisted in very long and with the means at 
hand, there soon will be no prospective in- 
vestors, and Governor Forbes's plans by which 
he believes he can secure capital enough to 
increase the revenues of the Insular Govern- 
ment so that he can put into the schools the 
one million and a half children who cannot 
now have this privilege because of lack of funds, 
will be checkmated. This will halt the most 
powerful instrument for the regeneration of 
the Filipino. The gente illustrada or some of 
the most prominent of them, at least, and their 
American allies in the United States, assert 
that it shall remain halted until independence 
or some promise of it be secured. 

In this situation, the United States may 
make choice of but three courses. They may 
altogether withdraw, withdraw partly, or go on 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 203 

as we have been proceeding for the past 
decade. 

A complete withdrawal would mean that we 
would have no more to do with the Insular 
Government than now has Great Britain, 
France, Belgium, or Germany, each of which 
has very large investments and commercial 
interests in the Philippines. Besides the real 
property which we should have there out of 
our expenditures in the Islands of some three 
hundred million dollars and some other millions 
of private American investments, there would 
be several thousand Americans with their 
families who would be left behind, do the best 
we might. Their all is in their little enter- 
prises, and always, no matter in what country 
they are likely to be massacred, they refuse to 
leave. They cannot leave as a matter of 
economics ; and besides, as somebody has so 
well said, they are not of a running stock. 

So, overleaping the chagrin we should have at 
abandoning to its fate the high purpose we have 
had to develop these lands only for the benefit 
of their natives, the United States would have 
very great interests in the Philippines, no matter 
how hard we might endeavor to free ourselves 
from them. And these interests would prob- 
ably, in each item, be ten times as great as 
the corresponding one in the account between the 
Philippines and any other of the Great Powers. 



204 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

If we may learn from the past, France, 
Germany, and Great Britain would send men- 
of-war to Manila the moment we announced 
that we were to leave the Islands to the Filipinos. 
They were all there to see that their particular 
interests were protected in 1898, Germany 
alone having five cruisers anchored beside 
Dewey's fleet for several months. The Fili- 
pinos have no ships of war, no army, no arms. 
These Islands undoubtedly have resources of 
great wealth. In time of war in the Far 
East, their possession as a base would be of 
very great advantage as against other nations 
not so fortunate. 

Nations sometimes take things just because 
they want them. Germany is generally cred- 
ited with taking all the territory she can 
secure, because she must do so to provide for 
her necessary commercial development. This 
is likewise true of Japan. 

At the least imminent danger to the Philip- 
pine interests of any of the Great Powers, that 
instant would see her forces landed to protect 
her property and her people. There is small 
chance that the Islands, under such circum- 
stances, could retain their autonomy. There 
is but little more likelihood that any nation 
now in the Far East would stay her hand even 
for so slight an excuse as that mentioned. 
And when any other nation does take them, 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 205 

such effort as ours to uplift them is at an end. 
No other nation believes in treating a colony 
as we have treated the Philippines. The na- 
tives would be kept ignorant because they 
can thus be controlled easiest and least ex- 
pensively. But a still more potent reason 
even for keeping the people in ignorance would 
be this : that thus they could best be handled 
so as to become a paying colony. In other 
words, any other nation except this one would 
handle the colony mainly for the interest of the 
dominant power. That is why these other 
nations are in the colonizing business. 

With our improvements in the possession of 
the new owner, she would have little difficulty 
in extracting money from her acquisition the 
moment she stopped the continuance of the 
great expenditures for schools, roads, and 
harbors that the Insular Government has an- 
nually been appropriating. To a merciless 
master, who is intelligent, the Philippines are 
as rich a prize as the world now affords. 

To presume that we are to give these lands 
to some other Power that is bound to use them 
only as an investment and as a means of ob- 
taining advantage over us or over some other 
Power friendly to us, in the event of Asiatic 
disturbances that might involve the whole 
world — and which our relinquishment of the 
Philippines might very well cause, through 



2o6 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

disturbing the delicate balance by which the 
statu quo in Far Eastern affairs is now main- 
tained — is almost fantastic. The American 
people might consider a proposal that would 
give the Islands to the Filipinos. But to ex- 
pect that we shall give them to some rival is 
quite another affair. Indeed, abandonment 
of the Islands is so manifestly repugnant to 
everybody that the most bitter American 
opponents of our Philippine policy have never 
even suggested independence unless it be 
coupled with neutralization. No Filipino has 
ever asked it upon any other basis. In a formal 
petition for immediate independence presented 
to the American Congress on May 14, 1910, 
Mr. Quezon, acting under instructions of the 
Philippine Assembly, stated : 

"As a safeguard of the independence of the 
Philippines, the Filipinos ask of the American 
people their good offices in favor of the neu- 
tralization of the islands. The Filipinos firmly 
believe that in order to consummate the great 
work inaugurated by the United States in those 
islands she will not refuse to take the necessary 
steps to bring about the agreements of the 
great nations of the world for the neutralization 
of the Archipelago." 

The leading Anti-Imperialist in the United 
States, Moorfield Storey, one of the ablest 
lawyers in the English-speaking world, advo- 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 207 

cated the views just recorded before the House 
Committee on Insular Affairs, saying : 

"That it is feasible to obtain such an agree- 
ment is, I think, hardly doubtful. . . . 

"Moreover, what we are dealing with, that 
which we are afraid of, is not so much the 
anxiety on the part of any foreign nation to 
take the Philippine Islands because it wants 
the islands, as it is the fear that one nation may 
take them in order to prevent another nation 
from taking them. . . . Probably if England 
should be assured that Germany would not get 
them, and Germany that France would not 
get them, and France that no other foreign 
power would get them, they would be glad to 
agree that these islands should become inde- 
pendent. They would be protected by an 
international agreement against their being 
absorbed by any rival." 

' Messrs, Storey and Quezon, backed by the 
Philippine Assembly, undoubtedly have pre- 
sented the sentiments and desires of those 
working for independence, and as not even they 
have expressed any wish for independence with- 
out neutralization, the subject is worthy of no 
further space than is required to note that their 
position is in itself considerable of a confession. 
The careful student would at once wonder if 
people who announce they dare not try to main- 
tain themselves among the family of nations are 
able to maintain any stable government at all. 



2o8 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

The only radical change, then, from our 
present relationship to the Islands that is open 
to us is the qualified or limited withdrawal. 

The enthusiastic advocates — and there are 
many — of this way which they think will 
lighten our burdens and aid the Filipinos 
seem never to doubt that the plan is feasible 
and desirable. A careful examination, how- 
ever, of the actualities of the problem cannot 
leave one entirely certain of the soundness of 
either contention. Certainly neutralization will 
not be secured by sending out reply cards with 
requests for assents by return post; that 
much the following will quickly demonstrate, 
but no better than Mr. Storey's naive suggestion 
above, that all that be required is to have those 
inveterate enemies England and Germany, and 
France and Germany come to an agreement. 
The day when the lion and the lamb would lie 
down together has been prophesied for some two 
thousand years but it is still deferred. 

The favorite asserted precedents for our 
proposal of neutralization are the cases of 
Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium. More un- 
fortunate illustrations cannot be found, for 
there is no important analogy between these 
countries and the Philippines. The difference 
that is so radical as to prevent there being any 
real resemblance is that the Continental countries 
concerned are civilized and law-abiding and the 



THE PROBLEM IN 191 3 209 

Philippines is not; at any rate, no nation 
will accept it as such after we recede from con- 
trol, until it be proven. It is safe to assert that 
neither England, Japan, Germany, France, 
Belgium, nor Russia will agree to the integrity 
of the Philippines until they know just what 
the policies and future of the Filipinos are to 
be, and, so far as those nations have invest- 
ments and citizens in the Islands, what the state 
of law and order is to be. 

Further, when we ask the other Powers to 
agree to permit the Philippines to retain their 
independence, we are requesting an act of them 
that is a distinct sacrifice, at least so far as 
the nations there with investments and citizens 
are concerned, for we suggest that without 
recompense of any character they consent to 
an exchange of the security of their interests 
under our flag for the insecurity of a flag with 
no history over an uncivilized community. 

Such a proposal is almost its rejection. It 
seems quite as absurd as the first course hereto- 
fore treated — abandonment. 

The only reasonable neutralization, from the 
viewpoint of the Powers, would be one that 
left the United States with the responsibility 
for law and order toward the property and 
citizens and interests of all other nations. 
That arrangement, if we couple with it a sub- 
stantial withdrawal of our present control of 



210 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

the natives, means that we shall have the real 
responsibility to all the rest of the world for 
the internal conduct of the Filipinos without 
having the control of them. We should have 
no appointing power of the judiciary, for ex- 
ample, no guaranty that justice would be 
meted to foreigners, the rock upon which so 
many international friendships have split. 
We should have no control of their foreign 
policy or acts — and this in the most eruptive 
sphere within international influence, at a time 
when every great Power is manoeuvering so 
carefully for advantageous positions a century 
hence in the Orient that no one nation is per- 
mitted by the others to loan money to any 
people in or near Asia. And, incidentally, 
when rich nations fight to loan money to a 
poor one, the latter's welfare is not the fore- 
most motive of the would-be creditors. 

In this position, so fraught with momentous 
possibilities, in the very center of the theater 
of action for all the commercial nations from 
now on, we may, to help the Filipinos or re- 
lieve ourselves, as we think, become responsible 
for the conduct of a people over whom we have 
no authority — but we should not do it blindly. 
We must examine the specific dangers, and the 
first of them is the relations with Great Britain 
— that is, with Japan. 

Under what has been called the Secret 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 211 

Treaty between Japan and England, under- 
stood to have been signed on August 12, 1905, 
the two countries concluded a defensive and 
offensive alliance, the object of which, in the 
text as since published, is : 

" (a) The consolidation and maintenance of 
the general peace in the regions of Eastern Asia 
and India ; 

" (b) The preservation of the common in- 
terests of all Powers in China by insuring the 
independence and integrity of the Chinese 
Empire and the principle of equal opportunities 
for the commerce and industry of all nations 
in China ; 

" (c) The maintenance of the territorial rights 
of the High Contracting Parties in the regions 
of Eastern Asia and of India, and the defense 
of their special interests in the said regions ; . . . 

Article II 

" If by reason of unprovoked attacks or aggres- 
sive action, wherever arising, on the part of 
any Power or Powers, either High Contracting 
Party should be involved in war in defense of 
its territorial rights or special interests men- 
tioned in the preamble of this Agreement, the 
other High Contracting Party will at once come 
to the assistance of its ally, and will conduct 
the war in common, and make peace in mutual 
agreement with it." 

This most remarkable document, which 
reaches the acme of Japan's diplomatic achieve- 



212 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

ments, as extended in 191 1, will remain in force 
until July 13, 1921. When the history of the 
great American, Henry W. Denison, who has 
been Japan's foreign policy for a quarter of a 
century, be written, this treaty must be his 
greatest work, with but one possible exception, 
of which mention will soon be made. 

As an immediate result of this understanding, 
England was enabled to cut her naval forces in 
the Far East to the minimum and leave to the 
land of the Mikado the protection of all Eng- 
lish interests in that distant region. 

So it is with Japan that we must deal directly, 
when English interests are involved in the Far 
East — and Great Britain and Germany are in 
a bitter race for commercial control of the re- 
gion involved. For this struggle Germany has 
raised the number of her Dreadnaughts to be 
ready in 191 5 from the five possessed in 191 1, 
when this alliance was extended, to nineteen ; 
and her great rival, with but ten in 191 1, will 
have twenty-six in two years from January, 191 3. 

Dealing with Japan and Japanese men-of- 
war is one thing. Dealing at a time of great 
stress with Great Britain and her Dread- 
naughts is quite another affair; and yet, it is 
with Japan that we must treat concerning Eng- 
land's interests, as the Filipinos may become 
involved in them when we permit our present 
wards to handle their ow^n foreign affairs. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 213 

But even of more import is the further fact 
that Japan has a very great interest upon her 
own account in the Philippines, much greater, 
I fear, than Americans as a rule appreciate. 

Japan must expand or starve. All the Powers 
see that and treat it as a basic fact in any move 
that the island empire endeavors to effect. 

Just prior to the opening of the Japanese- 
Chinese war, which showed the world that 
Japan was indeed a world power, Formosa, 
then owned by China, and Korea and Man- 
churia, which were certain to come within the 
sphere of the impending conflict, were overrun 
with Japanese soldiery, who mastered the 
military topography of these territories. 

Just prior to the opening of the war by 
Japan against Russia, ten years later, all the 
Asiatic coast belonging to Russia or any other 
nation that might become the theater of war, 
was overrun by Japan in the same manner. 

When, in 1906, the anti-Japanese sentiment 
broke out on our Pacific coast, California 
suddenly found herself entertaining more Jap- 
anese men than she had been aware were within 
her boundaries. 

; Officers of our forces in the Philippines re- 
ported at about the same time that there had 
arrived in the Archipelago a large number of 
Japanese soldiers in disguise, usually as peddlers, 
who, wherever they went in the Islands, were 



214 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

inciting the natives against us ; and the secret 
service reports in Manila are full of later evi- 
dences of this character. 

Just prior to the disturbances in Mexico 
preceding the deposition of Diaz, which threat- 
ened for many weeks to compel us to intervene, 
an imposing number of high Japanese army 
and navy officials made a visit to the City of 
Mexico and for some weeks entertained in a 
most lavish and extravagant manner the chief 
men in the Mexican Government. When the 
Madero Revolution broke out, but a little 
later, our army officers discovered that along 
the Mexican side of the boundary, between that 
country and the United States, the entire re- 
gion was overrun with Japanese, who had the 
set-up of soldiers, numbering in the aggregate, 
according to the best estimates, several thou- 
sand men, and perhaps enough to make an army 
corps. Our officers investigated sufficiently to 
learn that the visitors had made war maps 
of the entire boundary, or nearly so, showing 
all the fords of the Rio Grande, where water 
was to be had, etc., and all other topographical 
information such as armies require. 

In the United States, at the same period, 
Japanese of soldierly appearance were dis- 
covered to be working along all our trans- 
continental railroads as section men, with an 
intimate knowledge of the location of every 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 215 

bridge by which the East could be cut off 
from the West. 

At or about the same time, Russia announced 
that thereafter she would extend her territorial 
waters to eight miles from her coast line, five 
miles beyond the prior international limits. 
This was bound to work great hardship on 
Japanese fishing interests and, because of the 
extent to which Japan is dependent upon fish 
for food, was an extremely important matter 
to that country, against which it was princi- 
pally aimed. England, too, stood to lose 
heavily by the new limit, and both injured 
nations prepared to make violent protest. 

The diplomatic world was aroused. But 
just at this juncture the anti-Russian agita- 
tion broke out in the United States, and in 
rather incendiary terms we notified Russia 
that we should abrogate the 1832 commercial 
treaty, because of her alleged mistreatment of 
American Jews. 

No sooner had this action taken place than 
St. Petersburg was overrun with visiting Jap- 
anese, high officials in the army and navy, 
diplomats, committees of merchants, and even 
members of the imperial Japanese family, who 
entertained in luxurious style ; and it was soon 
apparent that the more the relations between 
Russia and the United States became strained, 
the less there was said by Japan's representa- 



21 6 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

tives at the Russian capital about the great 
blow that Russia had given to Japan's fishing 
interests — and various Russian newspapers 
announced that negotiations were under way 
between the two powers to effect just such an 
offensive and defensive alliance as that already 
in existence between Japan and England. 
Further, in the summer of 191 2, newspapers that 
are usually cognizant of such affairs in both 
countries said that the treaty had actually been 
signed. Russia officially has denied it, but it 
is a fact that the various diplomatic chancel- 
leries of the Continental capitals believe that 
such an understanding is in effect, and that it 
is credited in Washington — and England no 
longer protests against the eight-mile limit. 

Japan, with Russia and England, or with 
Russia alone, would probably have but little 
difficulty in expanding in any direction that 
attracted her. When she took Formosa from 
China in the 1894 struggle, Formosa's people 
began to disappear and their places to be taken 
by Japanese. The same thing is occurring in 
Korea, which Russia lost to Japan in 1905 — 
and from Formosa to American waters in the 
Philippines is but thirty miles. It is but a 
hundred miles to the nearest of the Philippines 
and but 250 miles, or a single day's steam, 
for a fleet to the ports of Luzon itself. We may 
well be cautious, with these facts confronting us. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 217 

Another consequence of neutralization which 
involves our relinquishment of the conduct 
of the internal government of the Islands is 
the certainty that the progress of the helpless 
people there who constitute ninety per cent of 
the entire population will be at once relegated 
definitively to the hopeless estate that was 
their portion under Spain. 

The reasons for this statement are not at 
all involved. A little reflection will convince 
any thoughtful student of the history of the 
development of nations that in ten years or 
so of civil government we have not regenerated 
the eight million Filipinos. With less than 
one per cent of the people in 1904 with the 
education of an American boy of fourteen years, 
and but three per cent to-day qualified under 
most liberal requirements to take part in 
governmental affairs, while of all the remainder 
of the population in 1904 probably not more 
than two or three per cent had ever read any 
book of general information, progress toward 
social revolution must have been but slight in 
the interim. 

With all the wealth, all the learning, and with 
caciquism, the gente illustrada before we came 
had a grip upon the other ninety per cent of 
their fellow Filipinos as absolute as that of 
master over slave. The ambition of the gente 
illustrada^ the ten per cent who oppose us at 



21 8 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

every turn, is not the independence of the 
Philippines, but the independence of the gente 
illustrada. 

When in the Islands, Mr. Taft was visited 
by a delegation of gentlemen, who, as he says, 
"desired independence at once and made an 
argument in its favor based on the ground, 
which they solemnly stated, that they had 
counted the number of gente illustrada or 
educated people in the Islands, and they had 
figured out the number of offices to be filled, 
and had found that the number of educated 
people in the Islands was more than double 
the number of offices to be filled. They rea- 
soned, therefore, that as the offices could be 
filled twice, by educated incumbents, first by 
one party and then by the other party, the 
country was ready for self-government." ^ 

And those gentlemen were as educated and 
able, probably, as can be found in the Islands. 
According to their ideas, their training, their 
minds, their instincts, they had offered all the 
argument that was needed to demonstrate 
that the government should be turned over to 
them, thus insuring to them the repossession of 
their former absolute control of the submerged 
other ninety per cent of the population. 

And yet, if we neutralize and do turn the 
governmental powers over to anybody in the 
1 W. H. Taft, "Chautauqua Address," p. 36. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 219 

Philippines, we must turn It over to these 
same gente illustrada. They alone have any 
education, experience of affairs, and knowledge 
at all of matters of state. 

It is for their interests to obtain as much 
power for themselves as they can. There are 
no men on earth in their situation who would 
not do that very thing. There are not, and 
there never have been, gente illustrada that 
did not do the same thing in any country and 
that did not do it as long as they could. The 
Philippine gente illustrada^ like all their prede- 
cessors in history, will refuse to educate the 
ninety per cent over whom they have a life 
and death domination, because the Little Red 
Schoolhouse means the end of their rule. The 
gente illustrada will discourage investments by 
foreigners, because that means the raising of 
wages, competition, and the inculcation of hope 
for betterment that will not long submit to 
oppression. All books and newspapers will 
be censored just as they were under Spain. 
Everything that means uplift to the masses 
will be discouraged, because such a movement 
weakens the domination of the controlling ten 
per cent, their incomes, and their honors. 
And they will be successful in these methods 
of suppression until there is created a public 
opinion in that Archipelago so strong to the 
contrary that the gente illustrada, for their 



220 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

very lives, will not longer dare to persist, but 
will yield with their backs to the wall, fighting 
desperately every encroachment of republican, 
democratic ideals, yielding one reform, one 
concession, after the other, only so rapidly as 
they must. It is the history of all gente illus- 
trada of all peoples and of all times. It is 
the story of the globe. Such is human nature 
and so it will always be. And there can be no 
public opinion until the people can read, and 
have something to read. 

The Philippine gente illustrada have no better 
case to present to us as proof of what they 
would do than what we know they did in the 
Aguinaldo days, from 1896 to 1901. They 
had an opportunity then. There can be no 
reasonable doubt it was a rule of assassination 
and cruelty. It was even more despotic and 
oppressive than the Spanish Government had 
ever been.^ It began with a plot to massacre 
every Spaniard in bed, at night, at a fixed toll- 
ing of the hour by the church bells. There 
were assassinations among the leaders in their 
efforts to reach or to maintain leading place. 
The role played by Aguinaldo in that struggle 
will always be open to dispute. Unfavorable 
comm.entators say that just when he had Spain 
beaten, he and thirty-four other leaders entered 

1 Address before New York Chamber of Commerce, April 21, 
1904, by W. H. Taft, Secretary of War, p. 4. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 221 

into a written contract with Spain by which, for 
eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars, they 
were to retire from the rebellion ; that of this 
sum but two hundred thousand dollars was paid 
and that all paid to Aguinaldo alone, in ad- 
vance; and that he has been living on this as a 
retired wealthy landowner ever since, having 
betrayed his army, his thirty-four companions 
in arms, and Spain, too, for he would not stay 
bought, but returned contrary to the contract 
and began another revolution, which he had 
discovered to be a pretty profitable business. 

His friends, on the other hand, say that he 
took the money when he saw he could not win 
in that particular rebellion, his purpose being 
to use it to finance a later uprising, when the 
omens might prove more favorable — and that 
his later course is evidence of the disinterested- 
ness of his conduct. 

All that seems capable of absolute proof is 
that he was a poor school-teacher before the 
rebellion ; that he did retire from that struggle 
together with all his principal leaders — an act 
that broke the rebellion ; that the thirty-five 
were to have had altogether eight hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars from Spain according to 
a written document, when they laid down their 
arms ; that of this sum Aguinaldo was to have 
four hundred thousand dollars ; that Spain de- 
faulted the balance that was to go to the other 



222 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

thirty-four and besides defaulted all of the eight 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars except the 
two hundred thousand dollars which, under the 
terms of the contract, had to be paid — and 
was so paid — to Aguinaldo in cash before he 
would cease war operations ; that he and his 
leaders retired from the rebellion, went to China, 
purchased some arms, and in a few months 
returned and led a second rebellion ; and candor 
makes it necessary to say, without prejudice 
or design, that Aguinaldo has been financially 
independent ever since. For similar reason it 
should also be added that there are many sources 
from which Aguinaldo might legitimately have 
become as well-to-do as he is. 

The important thing about the whole con- 
troversy is that it suggests much, if it be not 
typical of much, that surrounds any complete 
history of the Aguinaldo administration. 

I have talked with Aguinaldo in his own 
home about his views of our occupation. He 
is bitterly opposed to everything that we have 
done. He believes in none of it. He told me 
so in every word and look, and he is by far the 
greatest man the Filipinos have produced, when 
deeds done are taken as the criterion. No other 
native has been able to organize the people 
into any coherent effort — and he is not yet 
forty-five years of age. If we put the gente 
illustrada into actual power, it is unlikely that 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 223 

he will remain quietly at Cavlte VIejo, where 
he may now be found upon his farm. His Is 
the only national figure on the ground. We 
should have another Agulnaldo government, 
in effect and all substance, even if he himself 
were not It. 

With so great a prize at stake as the leader- 
ship — one might almost say ownership — of 
eight million most ignorant natives, taken as a 
whole, with bitter hatred between some of the 
tribes, with the Inevitable jealousies that must 
exist among those anxious for the supreme 
power, he would be rash who would confidently 
project the outcome as one of peace and good 
order. Barring the sudden rising of some 
giant who has not yet appeared, the lists which 
would determine the identity of the new leader 
would contain only a large number of men of 
about the same order of ability, with all the 
chances favoring the man who could make the 
most seductive speech to the Ignorant masses. 

Yet there are those who urge that neutraliza- 
tion should be given a trial and perhaps given 
trial now, as soon as we can make the necessary 
agreements with the interested nations, if they 
can be made, which is not at all clear. Their 
reasons appear chiefly to be about as follows : 
Given control, the gente illustrada and the people 
at large will learn more about how to conduct 
and how not to conduct a government In a year 



224 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

than they will learn under any tutelage in a cen- 
tury. It is said that it is responsibility that 
develops men ; and that when President Grant 
was asked by the late emperor of Japan how the 
Japanese could best be taught to vote, the great 
soldier sententiously responded, "By voting '* 
— and therefore the best way for the Filipinos 
to learn to govern is by governing. 

It is pointed out that we have laid great 
stress upon withholding independence from the 
Filipinos until we are sure they can maintain 
a stable government, and maintain peace and 
order, whereas if we wait until we are sure of 
that, they will never be free, for nobody can 
maintain peace and order always. We are 
not going to do it out there very long, it is 
asserted, nor is England going to continue doing 
it indefinitely in India. We are told that in 
the latter country, the moment the natives 
see that the white garrison is weak enough, the 
days of 1857 will recur, when the Sepoys, the 
most favored theretofore by the English, sprang 
at every white throat in an instant. 

It is also urged that in our present course we 
may be doing too much for the Filipino for his 
own good ; that he will be in the position of a 
son of a rich man, about the most dangerous 
height that a boy can occupy, and with not half 
the chance of success that the newsboy has, 
whose very struggles make him able to be sue- 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 225 

cessful; that the very failures and struggles 
of a government by Filipinos will make it 
strong and enduring. It is observed that even 
if the Filipino does his worst, he could hardly 
eclipse involving the entire Archipelago for four 
years in a civil war between brothers as an 
achievement; and that the way to build a 
nation is through its very wars, its revolutions, 
its rebellions, its assassinations, its disgraces, 
its shames, and its consequent revulsions to 
better things. It is said that the Filipinos will 
need great men, and are they, Minerva-like, 
full-panoplied, and endowed with great wis- 
dom, to leap from out the forehead of Jupiter ? 
The answer, they tell us, is that only great 
events will make men great, or bring them to 
the front, which is the same thing; that great 
crises are the fires that temper the steel that will 
bend but not break, with which nations must 
be welded. 

Finally, those urging these views frequently 
refer to the recent rapid rise of Japan as an 
earnest of what an Oriental nation can accom- 
plish with modern. Occidental facilities. 

As to most of these arguments, it must be 
admitted that they are entitled to very great 
weight, that they go to the very roots of the 
problem, and that no informed man, of his own 
knowledge, may say absolutely that they do or do 
not indicate what would be best for the Filipinos. 



226 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

But there is one thing of which we can be 
confident, and that is that the comparison with 
Japan is not eifective. In the first place, Japan 
is not a tropical country. It lies in the temper- 
ate zone, its northern point reaching to about 
the same degree as that of Maine, and its south- 
ern limits corresponding to New Orleans, with 
practically the same variations of temperature 
as we possess. Its people have the quick, active 
minds and bodies of the other inhabitants of 
that zone. Brought down to the Philippines, 
the Japanese work no better than do the native 
islanders. 

But most important of all, is the fact that 
Japan has arisen by her own efi'orts. No other 
nation has supplied her with roads, railroads, 
schools, hospitals, harbors, a stable government, 
the telegraph, the telephone, the modern weapons 
of defense and attack. To be sure, the Occident 
taught her these things, but it was because 
Japan had the ambition and good sense to see 
that she must acquire these engines of progress 
if she was to be one of the Powers. She sent 
her boys and men here to see how we constructed 
these things, and employed them. She hired 
our experts to go across the Pacific and install 
them. But always she was in control. If mis- 
takes were made, it was Japan who paid. She 
directed the innovations, using us merely as 
encyclopedias; and then, as soon as she had 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 227 

mastered her lesson, she packed our experts 
back home or else continued them as em- 
ployees merely. She struck out for herself, 
and she will not disappear, for she has learned 
her trade. 

The Filipinos have not learned it. They 
have not even begun to serve their time. As 
miraculously as if out of the skies, they have 
been given the attributes of modern civilization 
without one struggle or any insistent desire to 
obtain them. It is a house founded upon the 
sands, not upon the permanent foundation that 
is builded of the knowledge that comes only 
with the actual experiences of the struggles and 
failures of long-continued, determined effort; 
and until they have developed a national 
spirit that calls for, yes demands even, a mod- 
ern civilization, it is idle to compare their 
future with that of a nation which has done 
that very thing. 

There remains to consider but the third 
possible policy we may pursue : the indefinite 
continuance of the policy we declared at the 
beginning of our occupation and to which we 
have, as best we could, tenaciously held ever 
since, to wit, in the words of McKinley : 

"To take to those distant people the prin- 
ciples of liberty, of freedom, of conscience, and 
of opportunity that are enjoyed by the people 
of the United States." 



228 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

With this in view, Governor Forbes pub- 
lished the following message to the Filipinos : 

"To the Filipinos I say, turn your undivided 
attention to the material development of your 
country and rest confident in the good faith 
of the United States. If it were the desire 
of the United States to prevent the Filipinos 
from becoming a progressive, happy, and united 
people, strong in the accumulations of wealth 
and knowledge and capability of nationality, 
we should not be devoting our entire energies 
toward the accomplishment of those measures 
which make such a nationality possible; we 
should not be providing all of the people of the 
Islands with a common language ; we should 
not be maintaining different organizations of 
armed Filipinos drilled in the art of war, aggre- 
gating ten thousand men, of whom five thou- 
sand are paid from the Treasury of the United 
States as United States troops ; we should not 
be extending the privileges of occupying the 
more important posts in the government serv- 
ice to Filipinos ; we should not be devoting 
our first efforts toward binding the Filipinos 
together into a closer union by those ties which 
come from improved means of communica- 
tion, as post-offices, telegraph and telephones, 
railroads, roads, subsidized steamboats, and 
so forth." 

If Governor Forbes be retained in his posi- 
tion, he will steadily shape his administration 
toward securing the development of Island re- 
sources through American capital, in order 




Highest Types of the Tagalog Gente Illustrada. 

Governors of Tagalog Provinces in 1904. 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 229 

that the revenues of the local government may 
thus be increased to a figure that will permit 
more rapid expenditure upon the roads, rail- 
roads, harbors, and schools, our chief civilizing 
forces. 

With almost the same assurance, it may be 
asserted that he will secure this capital, for he 
knows how to do it. Before he went to the 
Islands at all, the securing of capital and its 
investment was his daily work. The financiers 
will follow his recommendations in the end, 
even if the actual investment of the money be 
somewhat postponed because of the present 
opposition of the gente illustrada. 

We shall make steady if slow progress. We 
have done so from the beginning, and there 
would seem to be no good reason why the record 
cannot be indefinitely continued. Unquestion- 
ably we can give the submerged ninety per 
cent of the Filipinos a better opportunity to 
improve their condition than they ever had or 
can hope to secure under any other regime. It 
is a chance and a chance only that many of 
them need. The United States has millions 
of immigrants who know what that means. 

Much has been said of the Filipino's pre- 
sumed lack of thrift, just as it used to be said 
of the Irish before they came to America and 
showed the world what they could do with a 
fair opportunity. 



230 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

For example, it has been contended that the 
Filipino cannot be depended upon for con- 
secutive work. He certainly could not be 
under Spain, for he had no assurance that he 
would be paid at all, and whenever he did re- 
ceive remuneration it was frequently in bad coin. 
He had no incentive. 

We met this apparent indifference as soon as 
we went to the Islands, but we have had little 
difficulty with it. One of the most prominent 
instances indicating the possibilities of these 
people appears in the history of the construc- 
tion of the street railway system in Manila. 
Some five hundred natives were set at the work. 
Upon the second day only about a third of 
them were on hand. The day after that, twice 
as many came, and so it went, up and down, for 
a fortnight. No expostulations of the con- 
tractor were of any avail. The workmen were 
unable to see why he should complain, as he 
paid them nothing when they did not labor. 
The response to that was the establishment of 
a rule that absence meant discharge. That 
ended the difficulty for the time, but after some 
weeks there were wholesale desertions again, 
this time because the workers wanted to visit 
their families. The proximate cause of the 
Balangiga massacre of our troops was due to an 
officer's insistence that there be no concession 
to native employees, permitting such returns 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 231 

to the family roof. The American who had 
charge of the Manila construction was wiser. 
He saw that a Filipino will not long remain 
absent from his home. The contractor soon 
discovered a remedy. He merely moved the 
homes to the work. Then, again, the men were 
unable to accomplish much after the noon 
hour. A little investigation disclosed the 
reason; they ate nothing, practically, between 
the two working periods, but spent the time in 
sleep. By handing each laborer a dime just 
before twelve o'clock daily, and obtaining the 
presence of vendors of nutritious foods when 
the whistle blew, the efficiency of each man 
was doubled. 

Several illustrations to the same general 
effect are to be found in Mr. Hamilton M. 
Wright's useful volume, where he says : ^ 

"Perhaps the most striking example that 
could be given of the success that may come 
to the Anglo-Saxon that makes good workmen 
of the native population and improves their 
condition as well as his own, is to be found in 
the marvelous experience of Mr. John Orr, 
of Dalupaon, a town founded by him in South- 
ern Luzon. Mr. Orr went to the Philippines 
fourteen years ago and engaged in lumbering 
the inexhaustible mahoganies, ebonies, and 
construction woods. When he settled at Dalu- 

1 Hamilton M. Wright, "Handbook of the Philippines," 
PP- 347-350? McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1907. 



232 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

paon, eight years ago, the people of the vicinity, 
who were a wild tribe of the great Bicol Fili- 
pinos, lived in trees and subsisted on roots, fish 
that were cast up by the sea, and the precari- 
ous fruits of the chase. Mr. Orr taught these 
people how to work, and he paid them for their 
work. They became efficient laborers, and 
to-day his foremen and skilled foresters require 
no supervision. At the present time there 
are in the vicinity about three hundred families, 
who live in good houses of native construction, 
wear good clothes, go to church, and send their 
children to the schools provided by Mr. Orr. 
That the most of the Filipino people do best 
under paternal administration is attested by 
the immunity from various disasters which has 
attended Mr. Orr's workers. When, about 
half a decade ago, the cholera broke out in 
Ambos Camarines Province and destroyed 
about eighteen per cent of the population, Mr. 
Orr quarantined his little community by placing 
an armed sentry at each trail leading from the 
forest. Not a person was taken with the 
cholera. When the insurrection broke out, 
Mr. Orr's men remained at work. When grim 
famine followed the insurrection, and tens of 
thousands perished for food or succumbed to 
disease, and when our Government was ex- 
pending millions of dollars in the importation 
of rice to relieve the famine-stricken districts, 
Mr. Orr had abundant food for his employees. 
. . . And so through war, famine, and pes- 
tilence, this pioneer kept his own people busy 
and happy, and was at the same time carrying 
on a profitable venture. Some of his workers 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 233 

have never left the cuttings, and only three of 
them have ever left him to seek employment 
elsewhere. None have ever expressed genuine 
dissatisfaction. . . . 

"Mr. Frank C. Cook, president of the Davao 
Planters' Association, owns a plantation on the 
Balutaca River, forty-five miles south of Davao, 
Mindanao Island. When first he went to the 
region, in the early nineties, Mr. Cook came 
upon a lovely valley in the midst of a jungle. 
The scattered tribes living about — pagan 
Bogobos and others — were wild, timid, and 
quarrelsome. Mr. Cook at first found it diffi- 
cult to get into communication with them, 
but by living there alone he won their confi- 
dence. Under his direction a village street 
was laid out, trees were planted, and houses 
built. The wild Malay showed a willingness 
to work, and sought food, clothing, and mer- 
chandise. At the end of two years, Mr. Cook 
had a village of about two thousand people 
upon his plantation; to-day he can put a 
hundred extra men to work in the fields at 
any time. The people are simple-minded and 
industrious ; they have never molested any 
white man, nor committed any violent crimes 
among themselves." 

These are not isolated cases, but typical 
ones, and their continual recurrence will help 
wherever they be found. In time, similar 
results may be expected all over the Archi- 
pelago. 

But we shall never succeed in replacing the 



234 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

Oriental minds of the Filipinos with Caucasian 
ones, nor Filipino natural traits with those of 
our own race. If there is any means by which 
these things can be secured, it is by miscegena- 
tion, ^and even then we cannot be certain of the 
issue, for no crossed animal has ever yet become 
entirely like his father and unlike his mother, 
or vice versa. The progeny is like neither. 
He is a new being. But this phase is probably 
not to be considered seriously ,^ further than to 
asseverate that it is not to be the solution. 
It never has been in any other similar problem. 
Yet it is necessary to say that the exhibition of 
any unusual ability by a Filipino is always the 
proximate cause of an inquiry into the man's 
ancestry, for the Filipino with a father of 
Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, British, 
or American blood is usually a great improve- 
ment in ability upon his mother's people. 
The vigor of the foreigners is usually so much 
greater than that of the natives that an inter- 
mixture usually means a long advance in brain 
and character power. A similar result we 
must acknowledge to follow the union of the 
negro and the American. 

Considerable space was devoted in the first 
chapter to the natural traits of the Filipino. 
They are, in the main, the same as those of 
almost all the Orientals. Those tendencies do 
not lend themselves readily to the establish- 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 235 

ment of a modern democracy through their own 
efforts, or its continuance, if it is anyhow sup- 
plied to them, whenever their ideas are those 
that control. Were they, then, to be put in 
possession of their government now, their gov- 
ernment would be one upon Oriental lines. 
If they are put in possession of their government 
a hundred years hence, their government will 
be one upon Oriental lines ; and so far as his- 
tory goes back, no Oriental government has 
ever been one in which republican ideals or 
privileges has obtained. It is contrary to in- 
born tendencies of the people of that hemi- 
sphere. 

We must know, then, once for all, that there 
will never be a real United States of the Phil- 
ippines, no matter when we turn the Islands 
back to their people. 

And more, there is no assurance that we ever 
shall turn them back. Indeed, there is con- 
siderable probability that the gente illustrada 
and the American Anti-Imperialists are correct 
in asserting that if Americans invest heavily 
in the Philippines, the United States will never 
relinquish the Islands. Certainly every Amer- 
ican concern with money there will do every- 
thing it can to retain the protection of our flag ; 
and with a hundred million dollars of American 
capital in the Archipelago, there would be created 
a most powerful opponent of any alteration of 



236 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

our present relations to the Island Government. 
For once, at any rate, the Anti-Imperialists 
see things as they are. It is but the simple 
truth to admit that if we get this American 
capital into the Islands, it will very likely get 
us into them so far that we shall never get out, 
even if capital proved the only active objector 
to our withdrawal. 

But other opposition there is bound to be, 
and that which will have little less effect 
upon Congress or upon public sentiment in 
the United States : and that is the constant 
working of many of our American officials out 
there to keep our flag at the masthead — not a 
bad sentiment. That is mere human nature, 
and in justice to those concerned, it should be 
said that probably their opposition to our with- 
drawal will be largely unconscious. The power 
that they will exert will be very hard to nega- 
tive, because they are upon the ground ; and it 
will be rare that a stranger to the Islands can 
successfully refute a statement of those so much 
better informed through their personal contact 
with Island problems. In fact, it will be well- 
nigh impossible to gainsay their combined 
reports. 

If stay there we do, there are some results 
that can now be foretold with considerable 
accuracy. For one thing, there is to be faced 
the continual murmur of the word "Independ- 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 237 

ence," that ever since Agulnaldo's rebellion has 
been in the mouths of the gente illustrada. The 
English and the other European colonizing 
peoples know what they are talking about when 
they criticize us for telling the Filipinos that 
we shall set them free, that everything we are 
out there for is to prepare them for that state, 
and that we are giving them schools because 
that will make them our equals. These foreign 
critics have always said that the natives would 
some day rise against us. It certainly is ex- 
tremely probable, considering the resiliency of 
that term " Independence." It acts like a germ 
that never leaves any system it enters. It 
multiplies until the fever of it possesses men 
utterly. It grows by what it feeds upon. It 
seems endowed with magic and boundless power. 
It possesses immortality. 

It seems folly to believe that these extremely 
bright, intelligent, ambitious, proud gente il- 
lustrada are going to sit by tamely until we tell 
them that we think they can run their govern- 
ment. Certainly the gente illustrada will never 
agree with us as to just when they arrive at the 
state of development we demand of them. In- 
deed, they are quite sure that they have reached 
it already. In that they doubtless disagree 
with us at this moment by some centuries ; for 
if it be true that we are not going to set these 
people free until they can run, or we think they 



238 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

can and will run, a pure democracy like our 
own, that time never will arrive, for the Oriental 
will never want a pure democracy, as it is con- 
trary to his idea of what a government should 
be — and he will have his way as soon as he 
can procure it. 

But if we are to persist in this hopeless task 
of making a Caucasian mind in an Oriental 
skull, the day will eventually come when we 
shall have educated so many Filipinos that they 
will probably rebel at some of our injustices. 
If they do not revolt under such provocation, for 
example, as our delay in giving them the 1909 
tariff laws, certainly our efforts to educate them 
with American ideals will have accomplished 
little. If they rebel, we shall, of course, re- 
conquer them, and then very likely take their 
uprising as another evidence of their inability 
to set up a stable government, with the result 
that we shall have a fresh reason why inde- 
pendence be withheld from them for another 
century or so. 

If we remain, we shall have to continue in- 
definitely our expenditure of some millions with 
each new year. 

Then, too, we shall govern the Islands often 
badly, at times very badly, because the Congress 
at Washington will not pass legislation that 
will benefit or even save the Filipinos, if such 
action injure American interests and particularly 



THE PROBLEM IN 1913 239 

powerful American industries. Whenever the 
two countries clash, it will be the Filipinos who 
will suffer. They are so far away that we shall 
not hear their cries of distress often enough to 
be kept aroused until we can answer their great 
need. It took about ten years to get the Con- 
gress to grant free trade between the United 
States and the Islands, although the latter were 
prostrate industrially because of the lack of 
this very legislation. The American sugar and 
tobacco interests, in the main, were able to 
postpone for this long period of time the only 
laws that would afford relief. 

There will always be similar neglect so long 
as the Islands be dependent upon the American 
Congress, not because that body is any more 
selfish or neglectful than any other correspond- 
ing body of a great nation — but because the 
American Congress will be and has been just 
like all other Congresses in history in their 
handling of similar situations. The story of the 
treatment by the British Parliament of Eng- 
land's colonies in this country and of Ireland 
is the only precedent that need be cited. 

Such is the Philippine Problem in 191 3. 

The American Congress must decide the 
policy the United States shall pursue. 

He would be extremely bold who could feel 
sure which in the end will be the best course, 



240 THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM 

either for the Filipinos or for the United States. 
But it must be evident that the logic of the en- 
tire situation, especially in view of the awaken- 
ing of the Far East and of the extraordinary 
diplomatic developments of 1911-1912, inevi- 
tably may compel us to continue as we have 
begun. 



FINIS 



